Skepticism

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Why why why?

I really like Richard Dawkins, personally and professionally, although a lot of readers here get indignant at that. But that’s why it hurts to see him say obnoxious things on Twitter, like rating different kinds of rape and pedophilia. He doesn’t understand why that’s objectionable; has he ever heard of Todd Akin (maybe not — he is an obscure American politician who made up a lot of nonsense about “legitimate rape” and got flambéed for it)? This is like walking straight into a firepit that has consumed many far-right wingnuts (which Dawkins is not) before him, and thinking he’ll come out unsinged.

Amanda Marcotte does an excellent job of explaining why his remarks were objectionable. That feminists think a patronizing pat on the ass deserves a lesser punishment than rape is simply not an issue; we don’t need condescending explanations of basic logic to understand the concept. The problem is people who don’t understand that logic at all, and think there’s a sharp cliff, an all-or-nothing pattern, so that rape gets you put in jail, while date rape gets you a high-five in the locker room. And those people aren’t feminists.

If you want to make a difference in social attitudes, you can say “Date rape is bad”…full stop. You don’t go on and say that some other form of rape is worse, because that’s all the date-rapers see: “Richard Dawkins says I’m not as bad as a rapist”. The first part is ignored.

Better still: I believe in a proportional response to a crime, and therefore someone who commits date rape should not go unpunished.

I read the thing he co-wrote and thought how wonderful! There’s no way he could mess this up, right?
I mean it would be almost comical if he did,
and even funnier if it was within just the next day or two.

OK I admit I was expecting this. Thanks for not disappointing, Dawkins.

Amanda Marcotte’s article implicitly accepts the premise that “rape by stranger at knifepoint” is worse than “date rape,” and focuses her argument on the fact that feminists have no problem saying that some crimes are worse than others.

But I question the premise, at least in some instances. I can imagine some people, at least after the fact, being more traumatized by the sense of betrayal by someone they trusted, the guilt and shame of blaming yourself for trusting the wrong person, etc. Not they should feel that way, or even that most people would, but it’s a possibility.

I suspect that Dawkins would say that the “embezzlement” that he accused Josh Timonen of was more hurtful to him than if his foundation had been burglarized or hacked by a stranger for the equivalent amount of money.

Would Dawkins be sufficiently shamed, I wonder, to know his remarks play right into the rhetoric of conservative Christian politicians who invent distinctions like “legitimate rape” as a way of depriving women of their reproductive rights, an agenda that is entirely religiously motivated?

I would think in many cases acquaintance rape is more damaging because of the sense of betrayal, because you can’t rely on your closest friends and family to believe you and back you up because they know the rapist as such a nice person, because it brings your own judgement into question to a greater degree (at least in your own eyes).

Anyway, why is he so intent on playing oppression olympics? Waving away this and that trauma and oppression. It really is disgusting. One person may be far more traumatised by “mere” molestation than another by a rape with threat of violence. So what? But no, let’s compare molestation to hellfire teachings and sexual harassment to Dear Muslima, and date rape to stranger rape. It’s like an obsession with him.

The tweets didn’t upset me until the issue was clarified. Now I can see what sort of problems it allows for. Good catch, everyone-but-me.

But I don’t understand his desire to post that. Do people suggest that Dawkins endorses rape? He seems to be defending himself against that stance. I know most of you hate him here. But do any of you claim he actually endorses rape? Even tacitly?

I remember reading that Mike Tyson said he never raped that woman he was convicted of assaulting because “there were no broken bones.” I know Richard is not saying acquaintance rape is OK (Thanks so much Richard!) , but he’s buying into the myth that bruises and broken bones are what make rape a traumatic crime. It’s not, it’s the abuse of trust, the taking away of the person’s privacy and freedom. You don’t have to leave a mark to do that.

You say Dawkins isn’t a far-right wingnut, but a lot of far-right wingnuts, especially those of higher social status are charming and charismatic enough to convince the decent people who know them personally that they couldn’t possibly be like *those* people who think Christianity is inherently superior to Islam and that there are hierarchies of badness of rape. Personally, ever since Dawkins decided to throw down the gauntlet against scientists fighting against scientific racism, I’ve viewed him as at best an unwitting ally and at worst (and more likely), a card-carrying member of the patrician extreme right.

I really wish you’d stop making so many allowances for him, PZ. You’re having to *work* at it, and it’s obvious. I hope it goes without saying that I write that as someone who really likes you and your work; I’m not an FtB hater.

But you’ve got rose colored glasses on about Dawkins and I think you probably know it. He’s not, in fact, so much better and above things, they way you characterize him. Sooner or later, when one consistently spouts things that sound out of step with widely accepted norms for civilized, compassionate, left-wing people, it’s time to consider whether they are, in fact, the compassionate civilized left-leaning person you keep insisting that they are.

I sure don’t want to get into ‘Which is worse, being betrayed by a friend or being physically assaulted by a stranger, along with rape?’ Because… what the hell kind of question is that? They’re both sufficiently bad that exact ranking doesn’t matter (not to mention is probably subjective based on the victim’s prior experiences).

Thing is, when he’s known for saying that the existence of worse levels of something means that people who have suffered lesser degrees of it should just shut the hell up — and then doubling down on the idea when called on it — then classifying rapes into a hierarchy like that is a genuinely boneheaded move.

One would think that someone as smart as he’s supposed to be would realize that.

Honest question for those of you who say date rape is arguably as bad or worse than “stranger rape:” would you favor the same (or worse) criminal penalties for date rape? It’s something I am still working through myself.

This was very upsetting to me, as I do honestly admire Dawkins for all kinds of reasons. I have, in fact, been reading ‘The Greatest Show on Earth’ all day before coming across the comment.

As someone who has had training in providing support to rape victims/survivors, and has seen the diversity of reactions to these experiences, I can safely say that neither experience is ‘objectively’ better or worse than the other.

To say that being raped by a stranger is worse than being raped by a partner is a bit like saying having verbal abuse hurled at you by a stranger, or being punched in the face by a stranger, is worse than a partner doing that to you. Maybe it is, for some people. But not for others. Depends on many things.

Depending on context, as others have said, it can be just as traumatic, or even more, to be raped by someone known to you. Especially in a long-term relationship, because you may trust and/or love the person who has done it. The pain of the conflicting emotions can be so terrifying. Particularly if that person is your main source of emotional support (for ex. if you don’t get on with your family). Where do you turn then? And then there seems to be the assumption that you wouldn’t fear you’d be killed or seriously injured during a ‘date rape’. This is very often not true.

What has shocked me about these comments is the lack of empathy behind them. What is so frustrating is that these kinds of comments are so often defended by playing the ‘offence’ card – i.e. ‘if you’re offended, that’s your problem’. It’s as if it’s been forgotten that to be critical of something, and acknowledge its problematic elements – whilst still being civil, obviously – is worthwhile and valuable (although only if your opponent is actually interested in seeing things from another perspective). But lately you can get out of having to engage in such discussions by just claiming your opponent is mindlessly ‘offended’. Whatever happened to ‘I respect you too much as a person to respect that belief’?

I think Dawkins is missing the point in a weirdly socially inept way. Sure, some violations are worse than others but this is not controversial. Going out of his way to point out the gradations of moral disapprobation that he makes (not necessarily congruent with everyone else’s, as the discussion about date rape here shows) seems gratuitous. If the purpose is not to minimize some offenses, what is the purpose? It’s hard to see that there is any other. That’s what’s troubling about this and his digging in and doubling down just reinforces the offense.

It makes no difference whether the rapist is a stranger or not, so the line between “stranger” and “date” rape is an imaginary one. In terms of sentencing, it depends on the facts of the case, but it most certainly does not depend on if the victim knew the rapist before hand.

Honest question for those of you who say date rape is arguably as bad or worse than “stranger rape:” would you favor the same (or worse) criminal penalties for date rape?

Yes. Or rather, it should consist of multiple charges, rape being the first. Use of a weapon, use of a drug to incapacitate or coerce someone, whatever the pertinent charge is for any violence involved and injuries caused, and so on.

@20: Duh, of course. Physical violence and other such things should matter, I guess, but if anything, being an acquaintance just adds to the trauma.

What worries me is, if enough prominent atheists pronounce Dawkins a douche, it will be used to denigrate *all* his work, including the books and biology – just like, say, certain issues with what Dworkin (same letter!) said reflect on both the entirety of her work and feminism in general to this time. It’s sad.

I agree with Screechymonkey at #8. I don’t think we can accept on face that any one kid of rape is “worse” than any other. Certainly, the sense of betrayal that comes from being raped by a person you know-and trusted- would add to the sense of violation for many people. Besides- rape is rape. There are no “degrees”- you were either consenting, or not.

I think instead what people are reacting to is the addition of ANOTHER crime in addition to rape when they talk about being raped “at knifepoint”. Being physically assaulted with a deadly weapon is a crime unto itself, and the compound crime of rape AND assault with a deadly weapon is worse than rape alone, just as breaking and entering is worse than just unlawful entry.

What worries me is, if enough prominent atheists pronounce Dawkins a douche, it will be used to denigrate *all* his work, including the books and biology

This is the same argument that is used to let scientific racism slide. We can’t point out the horribly racist “evolutionary” arguments being put forward by certain people and groups because it might give the creationists ammo in the great war. Fortunately, that attitude seems to be slowly fading away.

Honest question for those of you who say date rape is arguably as bad or worse than “stranger rape:” would you favor the same (or worse) criminal penalties for date rape? It’s something I am still working through myself.

The same. Which, as far as I know, is how it’s currently treated, at least as a formal matter.

Partly because it’s the same basic offense, and I’m not really comfortable parsing through the “better or worse” impact on the victim issue. But mostly because it would add another level of complication to a system that doesn’t need it. Whichever offense you choose to punish more, it will become another element of the crime that the state needs to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, and I don’t think we need to stick juries with sorting out whether, e.g., a 60-second conversation at a bar or party transforms a subsequent rape from “stranger” to “date.”

As a practical matter, date rapists would (continue to) get lesser penalties because plea bargaining would take into account the increased difficulties of conviction in such cases.

I remember reading that Mike Tyson said he never raped that woman he was convicted of assaulting because “there were no broken bones.” I know Richard is not saying acquaintance rape is OK (Thanks so much Richard!) , but he’s buying into the myth that bruises and broken bones are what make rape a traumatic crime. It’s not, it’s the abuse of trust, the taking away of the person’s privacy and freedom. You don’t have to leave a mark to do that.

I second this and Josh. Of course, to the above I’d add that it’s not just they need broken bones to be traumatic, they really don’t see rape as a crime. Women’s bodies are up for grabs by default. Otherwise, why say a friend raping you is less bad? Because that friend or date already made a claim upon you. You wouldn’t be on the date otherwise and you might’ve slept with him anyway. It’s only bad when a stranger takes another mans property.

Or at least, that’s how it reads and feels to me.
——————–
320 aelfric

Honest question for those of you who say date rape is arguably as bad or worse than “stranger rape:” would you favor the same (or worse) criminal penalties for date rape? It’s something I am still working through myself.

Uh, you mean charging them as a rapist for the crime of raping someone? Yeah….Why the hell wouldn’t I be?
If there’s wounds, they had the extra charge of assault, hence longer sentences. Same thing when a rapists murders their victims.

That system is fine by me, if you know the system actually worked towards putting rapists (besides the lone scary black man on drugs) in jail.

Thanks Richard. Thanks for once again hijacking an important issue. Thank you for making it necessary for people to stop working on the problem of rape culture, and distract themselves trying to do damage control from another one of your outbursts.

Now we get to spend time having to deal with “honest questions” because of your appalling ethical blindness.

Suppose that Parliament (or Congress, or whoever) is persuaded to enact mandatory long prison sentences for rape, by arguments which concentrate on instances of extremely violent rape with death threats. If there had recently been media reports of a series of such crimes, it might take a brave person to vote against.

Suppose also that, for the good reasons we have discussed, there comes to be a consensus that we shouldn’t compare degrees of rape, that “rape is rape”.

The combined effect might be that some people are sentenced to long terms of imprisonment when no-one actually intended this outcome.

@31: ah, no, I don’t mean he shouldn’t be called out. I’m just unhappy that his acts will have such a severe consequences for atheism and other issues he advocated for (one thing we might have learned from Dworkin’s case is that we can’t sweep the issues under the rug even if we tried anyway – they just keep coming back, because haters have long memories). I also think that the awareness of the involvement makes people *afraid* of openly disliking him.

@38 That’s fair as far as it goes, but the problem is with Dawkins’ douchebaggery, not with the calling out of said douchebaggery, which is what it sounded to me like you were worrying about in your initial comment.

Honest question for those of you who say date rape is arguably as bad or worse than “stranger rape:” would you favor the same (or worse) criminal penalties for date rape? It’s something I am still working through myself.

Suppose also that, for the good reasons we have discussed, there comes to be a consensus that we shouldn’t compare degrees of rape, that “rape is rape”.

The combined effect might be that some people are sentenced to long terms of imprisonment when no-one actually intended this outcome.

Yes, gods forbid that people who rape would be treated as though they’d raped someone just because they raped someone. What a horrible outcome that would be. Clearly the answer is for Richard Fucking Dawkins to declare himself the arbiter of which types of rape are worse in advance completely without regard for the specifics of each case.

@Aziraphale #37: Since we’re not dealing in hypotheticals here, let’s not wave around suppositions in place of discussing the actual person, the actual words, and the actual social attitudes on display.

I know it is an uncomfortable subject but the whole distract! conflate! thing that comes along every. damn. time. is very irritating. Next we’ll have someone arguing from property crime: but if you leave your sex organs in your car, what do you expect if someone takes them? And then I will have bingo.

And yes, thank you Richard Fucking Dawkins for instigating yet another conversation wherein people will show up and try to tease out at what point exactly sex without consent becomes real, honest to goodness rape that perpetrators should actually be punished for. Rawr.

Yes, thank you so very much. Those of us who have been raped truly appreciate the additional opportunity to be characterized as getting “overly exercised.” Thank you for ensuring there are men to engage us in this conversation. You’re a treasure, Richard.

nontrad @38: that’s understandable, thankfully I’m not popular enough for my incompetence at communication to have far-reaching consequences. But actually I think that certain actions should be called out as soon as possible, because otherwise as people committing them grow in prominence it becomes harder and scarier to do so.

Richard Dawkins has done a lot of things in the field of evolutionary biology that are really great.

And if he’d like to be remembered for them instead of being remembered as a rape apologist he really had better stop talking about rape and sexual harassment, because he seems embarrassingly incapable of not saying something incredibly awful every time he brings up the subject..

Would you like to know why I’m overly exercised about rating rape on a scale from mild to wild? Would you like to know what date rape can really be like? How hard it can be on a person because it is rape by someone you know and your friends know?

If you truly would like to know—that is, if you have enough caring to want to know, even if that means you have to temper yourself and not condescend to me about getting overly exercised—read the story of my rape. My date rape. The one that couldn’t possibly be reported because really, who’d believe me or care?

Honest question for those of you who say date rape is arguably as bad or worse than “stranger rape:” would you favor the same (or worse) criminal penalties for date rape? It’s something I am still working through myself.

Rape is rape.

Someone raped me and choked me. The crime of rape is rape. The physical assault is an additional crime.

Someone drugged and raped me. The crime of rape is rape. The drugging is an additional crime.

My relationships or lack thereof to these two people are irrelevant to the crimes they committed.

And tangentially, my trauma is mine alone and cannot be quantified and used as a way to judge other people’s trauma. What I found more traumatic doesn’t make one scenario in general worse or have any effect on how other people experience things.

There are not “different levels” of rape. Rape is rape. There may be different levels of violence, different methods of coercion involved, but those things are not the rape. The bit where a person is raped—that bit is the rape.

Perhaps, now, you’d like to be introduced to the rest of the English fucking language?

Yes. Or rather, it should consist of multiple charges, rape being the first. Use of a weapon, use of a drug to incapacitate or coerce someone, whatever the pertinent charge is for any violence involved and injuries caused, and so on.

This. (Continuing that logic, perhap a person who rapes a sex worker should be charged with both rape and Use of Slave Labor. Unless that’s something horribly thoughtless to say somehow, in which case never mind.)

Josh, I just want to say thank you for doing hard work in this thread. If you need someone to have your back, just ask.

================

As for the OP & Dawkins, well…

I wrote something on TDome earlier, before this thread was up.

I might as well place it here:
———————————-
He sees himself as a good guy, so naturally all the things he does are consistent with being a good guy. Therefore there can be no evidence that he’s a bad guy. Therefore the people who don’t trust him because they think that there is evidence of bad behavior and want to see something more positive before trusting? They must be doing logic wrong. There can be no such evidence. Therefore when people who don’t think he deserves the benefit of the doubt critique something tone-deaf, those people aren’t reasonably responding to a history of various fuck-ups, they are unreasonably thinking that it’s likely a good man will suddenly go bad!

I find myself wanting to write a beat poem for him:

“Look, hey, no. I’m a good guy!
Why are you all so unreasonable?”
he screams into London’s morning fog of pixels.
“You’ve twisted my words. Don’t lie.
All of us, selfish as genes, are able
to join, aren’t we? Aren’t we more than dick cells
Fit for cutting away? I
say, ‘date rape.’ Feminists start to rebel
and even my ‘splaining, ‘It’s only cause sex sells,’
Falls on their ears like spit in my eye.”

Yup! How dare you tell Daz or anyone else to calm down. Do you know which of the people on this thread have been raped? Do you know how it happened, when it happened, whether they are fully recovered or still living with flashbacks or PTSD?

No you fucking don’t! Which makes you an arrogant arsehole and a total waste of space, just here to wind up people who are being distressed by your appalling behaviour.

Proud of yourself?

Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaidensays

Calm down is not a contribution, and moreover, it’s something that you could predict would do anything other than “calm down” the commenters in this thread ***even if the commenters in this thread were unreasonably agitated, which, when it comes to resisting rape and its enabling myths, they are fucking not.***

I can only reasonably conclude that
a) you are a troll
or
b) you simply aren’t competent enough on this topic to make a valuable contribution.

Either way, get out of this thread. Apologize first, if you can, but go.

@67 Between the sanctimonious condescension of “calm down” and the stirring defense of the ideas that “Richard so eloquently and logically explained,” the question becomes troll, or RD’s personal sockpuppet?

You can’t rape someone in self-defence. You can’t rape someone by accident. So what’s with this murder comparison bullshit? Maybe, just maybe (and I’m not sure by any means) you could argue that if some entitled shit is deluded enough to genuinely think a smile of fear and being too afraid/paralysed to express aversion = consent, then you could draw some kind of not-exactly-helpful parallel with causing death by reckless endangerment; otherwise the whole comparison with degrees of murder is a load of abject bollocks.

Thanks everyone for the thoughts; I am interested primarily because of the statutory definitions of the degrees of rape, and especially their history in the Model Penal Code (which is the basis for the criminal laws in about 2/3 of U.S. states). Without going in to detail, the provisions used to have some fairly awful language, which has wisely been dropped. I guess what I am working through is the linking of moral culpability to degree of offense, and why forcible compulsion (without a weapon, for argument’s sake) is automatically worse than the coercion involved in a “date rape” (again, lacking forcible compulsion, for the purposes of argument, though I am well aware that “date rapes” can and often do include such compulsion).

Yeah, exactly. “Just a logic exercise” that he just happened to illustrate with rape and pedophilia as examples because who knew that might be a sensitive subject for anyone? What a spectacular ass he is.

@97 A pattern going back decades, like when Steve Rose warned him that the fascist National Front was appropriating his work to justify their racism and he insisted that they weren’t. When it was proved that they in fact were, Dawkins used that as an opportunity to write a letter to the editors of Nature smearing Rose and equating Rose’s anti-racism with the National Front’s racist misappropriation of evolutionary thought.

When you say “X is bad. But Y is worse” in a society where Y is pretty universally condemned, and X is constantly minimized, dismissed, and excused or apologized for… you risk sounding like one of the people doing the minimizing/dismissal/excusing/apologizing. Especially when you don’t have the best track record on the subject.

Yes, it’s logically flawed to take it as an endorsement of X. But it is a very reasonable interpretation to read it as an endorsement of the proposition that “society is taking X too seriously relative to Y.” And since I’ve never heard of Dawkins crusading for increased resources for the prosecution of knifepoint stranger rape, the reasonable interpretation is that he’s trying to downplay other forms of rape, which is an all too common sentiment.

Otherwise, what is the point of his statement? Just a passing observation with no point whatsoever?

I didn’t answer it because it is irrelevant to the point I made when I first posted.

Given that there are no degrees of rape, your point was not particularly pointy. I seem to recall pointing that out to you earlier, yet you evaded it and chose to get all pearl-clutchy about my wording.

If you disagree with my contention, please feel free to actually address the issue.

Trolls have very specific criteria for the topical-ness of the comments they will respond to. Wouldn’t want to go off on a tangent or anything! No, he has more pressing matters, like posting “calm down”, “betters? DOFL”, and “.”

I didn’t answer it because it is irrelevant to the point I made when I first posted.

The question of how different kinds of rape are different is irrelevant to the point that different kinds of rape are different. It’s such a good thing that we have people like Peter Warren and Richard Fucking Dawkins around to explain these things to us.

Alice Wilde: You shouldn’t have worried, I think there was a lot of eye-rolling in that thread. And of course, the inevitable vindication has arrived for us nay-sayers. The depressing fucking vindication.

i can’t find it, but didn’t PZ himself write a blog post a while back about Sam Harris and the use of inflammatory subject matter to prove an objectively logical point? this reminded me of that. Dawkins’ reaction is apropos … “i can’t believe the Twitter storm that it’s caused, I was only being logical” kinda thing …

Categorizing rape severity leads some people to the abominable conclusion that: “These young football players with such a promising future shouldn’t have their lives disrupted for one trivial indiscretion that was her fault for being there anyway.”

Some strangers rape. Some dates rape. Some family members rape. It’s rape. Gradations just confuse the issue.

Like I said on twitter. I got your point. However you really should watch the horrible examples that set ratio equivalences between concepts/ things that are not comparable and thus blow up the point you are trying to make.

Unless using trigger examples to generate a twitter storm to drive traffic to your site was your chief goal?

I should of course have said RELATIVELY mild. Obviously I don’t think any pedophilia is mild in an absolute sense. But I presume most victims would agree that being touched by an adult hand (though very unpleasant, as I know from my own childhood experience) is RELATIVELY speaking not SO unpleasant as being violently penetrated by an adult penis. But the logical point is, or should be, uncontroversial: no endorsement of the less bad option is implied.

Apparently child molestation is offficially NOT AS BAD as penetration. Because Dawkins doth declare it to be so.

Actually, it’s rather plausible that some people might find date rape WORSE than being raped by a stranger (let’s leave the “at knifepoint” out of it). Think of the disillusionment, the betrayal of trust in someone you thought was a friend. But my logical point remains unchanged

Jesus fuck. “Oh, I might have been wrong! But I’m still basically right”

I wasn’t even saying it is RIGHT to rank one kind of rape as worse than another (that caused an immense amount of agony and a scarcely creditable level of vitriolic abuse in the Twittosphere).

Dawkins is master of condescending not-pologies. Does he have a lick of shame at all?

You may be one of those who thinks all forms of rape are EQUALLY bad, and should not, in principle be ranked at all, ever. In that case my logical point won’t be relevant to you and you don’t need to take offence (although you might have trouble being a judge who is expected to give heavier sentences for worse versions of the same crime).

What a smug fucker Dawkins is.

All I was saying is that IF you are one of those who is prepared to say that one kind of rape is worse than another (whichever particular kinds those might be), this doesn’t imply that you approve of the less bad one. It is still bad. Just not AS bad.

What an asinine, non-point. That still requires a rather offensive “IF” assumption.

And the hypothetical comparisons that illustrated my logical point could, in all cases, be reversed without in any way changing the validity of the logic.

So at some point in time, somebody killed Dawkins and replaced him with a living Straw Vulcan.

What an unempathetic, smarmy, self-absorbed fucker.

Richard Dawkins doesn’t care about anyone who isn’t Richard Dawkins. His only goal in life is to feel better than other people and as a result he will never, ever, apologize to those who are Lesser than Richard Dawkins (i.e. Anyone). Fuck him.

It also probably doesn’t help that there’s been a lot of focus on Richard lately for endorsing anti-feminists like Jaclyn Glenn (who in turn seems to endorse The Amazing Atheist, source of those lovely rape threats that PZ quoted a while ago). As far as I know, he (Richard) has not said he’s against feminism as such, but that’s the impression that comes across.

Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaidensays

As a big fan of Dawkins’ earlier work in evolutionary biology and in the battle against Creationists, but also as a person who has been absolutely dismayed and disgusted by his recent tweets, such as ‘Dear Muslima’ and all the ones where he soft-peddles rape and belittles the Muslim world for their lack of academic awards … I can only suggest, gently, that the man is approaching his mid-70s and may have simply ‘lost the plot’, at least in the context of the Twitter forum. I watched this happen to two people I dearly loved, and it is a sad thing to behold. At some point all of us, if we live long enough, run the risk of devolving into Tweeting inanities. I only wish someone who was close to him would tell him that none of this is necessary.

I can only suggest, gently, that the man is approaching his mid-70s and may have simply ‘lost the plot’, at least in the context of the Twitter forum.

As I alluded to above, Dawkins has been this way for decades. His smearing of Steve Rose for having the gall to point out that racists were (mis)using Dawkins’ work to support their own agenda took place in 1980. Even then, he couldn’t just condemn the National Front and leave it at that; he had to launch an all-out assault against the scientist who had first privately, then publicly tried to raise awareness of a very real abuse of Dawkins’ own writings.

My personal hunch is that some very capable editors at his publishers are the only reason Dawkins has maintained his largely positive reputation for as long as he has.

How many times will it take for you, PZ, to realize that Dawkins is not a good person?

I know him personally. I respect his work. It’s basically impossible for me to close myself off to the good stuff I do know about him and view him only through the lens of his flaws, while to others the flaws are only too apparent. I am more than willing to criticize those flaws (as in this post), but to simply judge him in totality as “not a good person” is something I really can’t do.

Oh, for fuck’s sake. What the fuck is it with atheists and boundary issues?

*light bulb*

That is basically what it is, isn’t it?

Boundary issues, from a group of people who largely regard themselves as independent (i.e. asocial), logical (i.e. unemotional), with a dash of Skepticism (i.e. contrarianism). That’s pretty much expected and it would pretty much describe all of the problematic we see amongst our ranks…

I can only suggest, gently, that the man is approaching his mid-70s and may have simply ‘lost the plot’, at least in the context of the Twitter forum. I watched this happen to two people I dearly loved, and it is a sad thing to behold. At some point all of us, if we live long enough, run the risk of devolving into Tweeting inanities. I only wish someone who was close to him would tell him that none of this is necessary.

One doesn’t have to be senile to be an asshole. This is not new behavior and the man knows exactly what he’s saying. He chose those examples 100% on purpose or I’m a monkey’s fucking uncle.

I don’t follow him on twitter, so I guess I haven’t seen most of it. He has said before that he’s ‘sympathetic to genuine feminism’ (lol) and he comments in a positive way about Malala and other feminists standing up for the rights of muslim women, so it seems he’s not explicitly against it, but I don’t know to what extent he thinks of himself as a feminist supporter.

I just cannot. It’s not a flaw, PZ. At best, Dawkins is purposefully trying to upset people and at worst, he actually believes the shit that he spews. And this is not new behavior.

If it was anyone else with a record like his, he’d be totally written off as a hurtful old crank who needs to shut the hell up. But oh no, not the Grand Vizier of Atheism! He’s such a nice guy (when he’s not talking about sexual abuse or equal rights)!

It’s funny* isn’t it? These people who get so fucking defensive at the suggestion that they’re rape apologists can’t seem to wrap their brains around the concept of ceasing to force their company on people who clearly don’t want them around.

PZ, when you say you respect his work, does that include things like in the Ancestor’s Tale, where he first states his opposition to affirmative action before going on to basically regurgitate the HBD party line on race and sex differences? I understand how you can not want to jump on the bandwagon of criticism of someone you respect, but I don’t understand how you can deny that he’s become (and always, to some extent, been) part of the community of far-right writers who want to wrap their social and political agendas up in the legitimacy of science.

And I get that it’s probably irksome to see these comments, PZ, but I wish you’d consider that they’re coming from regular readers who, if you’re familiar with them, are known to be reasonable people. We’re not cranks, and we don’t hate you.

Where did I say I was surprised? After the good news of his rapprochement with Ophelia, I’ve been bracing myself for the other shoe to drop. I saw these tweets with a sense of resignation.

#150, nontrad:

No, you’re not getting it. I actively disagree with him on a lot of matters scientific, like his over-emphasis on selection and trivializing of drift. And I don’t buy into the HBD crap. Scientists can disagree on a lot of the details while still appreciating that an opponent is mostly right on the big issues.

It’s true, I cut him a lot more slack than I would some schmoe. But it’s not because he’s well known: it’s because I know him personally. You might have noticed that I don’t cut that other big name atheist, Sam Harris, much slack at all, so you simply can’t argue that I’m timid about bashing on poobahs.

You’re criticizing that Vulcan mind-set, while demanding that I ignore my all-too-human personal connections to condemn someone. I can’t. And I know you can, because you’ve never broken bread with him, and I can appreciate that too. All I can do is continue to criticize and reject the wrong things he says, but I can’t quite stuff the whole man down the garbage disposal, so don’t ask me to do it.

I am only able to skim at the moment, so apologies if this has already been addressed. There are different levels of murder charges, but they are all distinct in terms of mens rea: whether it was an accident, whether it was planned or opportunistic, etc. Non of this has anything to do with the levels Dawkins describes; the analogy is wholly absurd.

I am more than willing to criticize those flaws (as in this post), but to simply judge him in totality as “not a good person” is something I really can’t do.

I understand that, I understand the reluctance to write him off. That said, over the course of the last several years alone, he has done such a wealth of damage that it is very difficult to see any worth the man might have when it comes to promoting secularism. Mr. Dawkins has hardly been a blazing advert for the benefits of critical thinking. Instead, he’s presented this awful stew of privilege, prejudice, and the turning of a blind eye.

Mr. Dawkins has now become the poster child for all those who embrace an empathy deficit as a good thing, allowing them to dismiss any act as simple whining or playing the victim card. There’s simply no excuse. Here he is, attempting to categorize rape, after the massive outcry when he attempted to categorize child molestation. To me, that points more in the direction of beliefs which he firmly holds, and does not want to give up. Personally, I’ve seen too much from him to give him the benefit of the doubt. He may well be a good friend, a good partner, a good scientist, all that, which would perhaps suffice if he weren’t so very much the ‘face of atheism’ to so many people. And therein lies the rub.

Mr. Dawkins insists on publishing his beliefs and blithely dismisses any disagreement, or anyone pointing out he’s wrong, or suggests he needs better information and better thinking skills. He seems to think he’s beyond reproach and that his word is some sort of gospel. That is a very bad thing indeed.

Rape is rape. Yes, they differ, one to another, however, they all do one thing: they strip a human being of their autonomy, leaving them with one narrow focus: how do I survive? It’s beyond harrowing, and the circumstances of the rape do not matter. It would be so very nice if Mr. Dawkins could manage to think past his own nose and realize this, however, he’s shown no interest in doing so. I hope you do have an opportunity to talk with him, but I won’t hold my breath that it will help.

That’s another problem: he is the face of atheism to most of the world. I don’t expect perfection, but it would be helpful if the flaws weren’t so deep and so damaging to broader social causes…so we face the difficult choice of jettisoning a strongly entrenched representative of atheism or persuading said representative that his analysis is wrong. Which is easier?

I sort of understand the way dawkins thinks, I have people like him in my own family. He seems to have a certain type of old fashioned view of the world, and whilst in some ways he can be quite progressive it’s disappointing that such a smart guy can’t move out of the dark ages when it comes to certain areas.

But, as the face of atheism to most of the world, he really owes it to the movement to stop acting like he’s so goddamned infallible. That what he says is right and let’s just smite anybody who disagrees.

“I said something stupid. I was wrong.”

He says that, we can then say, “Look at what our ‘leader’ just did, religious of the world.”

Instead, not only does Dawkins come off as comfortable with “Atheism is just another religion,” but it seels like he wants to be the celebrant of this religion.

PZ, I hope he will listen to you. I don’t doubt that as one of the commentators claimed above that he has made some pretty big mistakes even early on. But I also can say that in my early 20s, when I otherwise felt like an atheist weirdo growing up in the Bible Belt, he helped me to soar intellectually above the fundamentalism all around me, and no one was better than him at helping me see the world through fresh eyes. Like PZ, I can’t just throw away all the contributions he has made. But now he seems intent on sinking his own legacy with comments seemingly designed just to hurt, instead of enlighten.

You’re the one who knows him personally. How easy would it be to persuade him that he is wrong? Obviously, persuasion isn’t working too well on the part of those who don’t know him personally, given his reactions to disagreement on the net.

To a degree, I’m still stuck at Egate, when Mr. Dawkins wrote that if anyone could write an explanation of how he was wrong without any naughty words, he’d pay attention and consider it. Many people took him up on that, and he dismissed them all. So, I don’t think persuasion would have a high rate of success. I’d dearly like to be wrong about that, but I don’t think I am.

But, as the face of atheism to most of the world, he really owes it to the movement to stop acting like he’s so goddamned infallible. That what he says is right and let’s just smite anybody who disagrees

Gotta agree. I really wish atheism’s own (apparent) Pope stopped acting like such a damn Pope.

I think it is worth talking about how some people have worse experiences with rape and sexual assault than others do. Some people’s experiences simply aren’t so strongly negative, and this leads them to conclude that either they weren’t really assaulted/raped, or worse, that their experience was representative, and other survivors are exaggerating. That was basically the problem with Dawkins’ comments about being assaulted as a kid, he assumed that his classmates were no more bothered by it than he was.

That’s another problem: he is the face of atheism to most of the world. I don’t expect perfection, but it would be helpful if the flaws weren’t so deep and so damaging to broader social causes…so we face the difficult choice of jettisoning a strongly entrenched representative of atheism or persuading said representative that his analysis is wrong. Which is easier?

Well, if atheism has to have a face, why not add some more? It’s not actually all old, white privileged dudes so….
And what’s the point of a face for a movement when they don’t accurately portray it? He’s the face of MRAs and anti-feminists at this point. Might as well make that distinction clear. Besides, in all honestly I’ll doubt he’ll change. I’m not criticizing hoping for a miracle (heh). What I am doing is distancing myself because I’ll be damned if I let that man represent me.
If he changes, that’d be awesome and would be happy for it. And I understand PZ that he’s your friend and why you feel the way you do.

But if he gets worse, I’m worried. Will you disavow a friend if it comes to it? I hope it never comes to that but it’s been years already and he’s not doing better. He’s digging in. How far til you have to decide a side in this rift?

@154 But when he promotes HBD and takes to Twitter to launch racist and misogynistic diatribes, at what point do we get to consider the racism and misogyny the “big issues” instead of little “details”? When does he stop being “mostly right” just because he accepts that evolution happens and doesn’t believe in god?

I think it is worth talking about how some people have worse experiences with rape and sexual assault than others do.

You know what I think is worth talking about? That rape is rape. That rape is never acceptable, under any circumstance. That there is no rape that is just boys being boys. That it’s not rape if the rapist doesn’t use the ‘r word’. That it is past time for police, organizations, and individuals placing the emphasis and responsibility of being raped or not raped on those who are likely to be victimized, a la the endless “rape prevention” lists which simply keep circumscribing a woman’s behaviour,* rather than placing emphasis on those would rape, rather than getting across one very simple message: Rape is never acceptable.

Honestly, the “face of atheism” needs to change, ESPECIALLY if people are concerned with being welcoming to women/POC. Just because Dawkins is doesn’t mean he should be.

But, hey. I’ve been feeling left out of the movement for years now (there’s only so many fights about harassment policies that this gal can handle) and it has been proved once again that The Great White Man always gets the benefit of the doubt at the expense of everyone else.

Unfortunately Dawkins is the public face of atheism regardless of whether atheists want him to be. The media and that part of the public who are interested make him so. Persuading him to change his views might not be an easy way, but it’s probably the only way.

Inaji, part of the reason why that Dawkins tweet enraged me because there is the lofty Richard Dawkins, above such petty concerns, declaring a hierarchy of rape; all part of a fucking logic lesson. And think how different it is reading about the different ways people at this blog recounted their experiences and how supportive people have been of each other, regardless of what type of rape it was.

And, as I pointed out, I was already furious at Dawkins because of my own situation.

but it would be helpful if the flaws weren’t so deep and so damaging to broader social causes…so we face the difficult choice of jettisoning a strongly entrenched representative of atheism or persuading said representative that his analysis is wrong.

But the flaws are extremely damaging to the social causes that you yourself say make the difference between being a Dictionary Atheist and not. Frankly, I don’t want Richard Dawkins acting as my representative*. There are plenty of liberal churches who do little more than pay lip service to Jesus and are way more progressive and socially responsible than anything he has done of late.

He’s a good scientist, as far as I can tell. Doesn’t make him a good human being.

PZ, I have broken bread with him. I staffed his tables at the 2007 AAI conference. I handed him and Dennett books to sign, and palled around with him and company for an afternoon.

Know, I don’t know him well. Not like you do. But I’m not a jonny-come-lately Dawkins hater. I’m an extremely disappointed former admirer.

I know it’s harder to do these things when you have a personal relationship with someone. That’s part of being human. But there does come a time when, I think, we’re all obligated to prioritize things other than our warm feelings about someone.

That time comes sooner when the person in question has as much power and influence as Dawkins does. And when his friends have such a wide platform as you enjoy.

These forums will sure be empty the next few weeks after the great purge that’s about to come. Because everyone knows PZ–my bad, Peezus– is a flagrant totalitarian and that FTB tolerates no dissent from the minions in the echo-chamber. Odd that these malcontents haven’t already met the ban-hammer though. Obviously they’re being led into a false sense of security. Clearly nothing as ridiculous as bans only being handed out to those making facetious arguments or looking to harm others.

I know him personally. I respect his work. It’s basically impossible for me to close myself off to the good stuff I do know about him and view him only through the lens of his flaws, while to others the flaws are only too apparent. I am more than willing to criticize those flaws (as in this post), but to simply judge him in totality as “not a good person” is something I really can’t do.

Fucker must give outstanding back rubs in person.

@157:

It’s true, I cut him a lot more slack than I would some schmoe. But it’s not because he’s well known: it’s because I know him personally. You might have noticed that I don’t cut that other big name atheist, Sam Harris, much slack at all, so you simply can’t argue that I’m timid about bashing on poobahs.

You’re criticizing that Vulcan mind-set, while demanding that I ignore my all-too-human personal connections to condemn someone. I can’t. And I know you can, because you’ve never broken bread with him, and I can appreciate that too. All I can do is continue to criticize and reject the wrong things he says, but I can’t quite stuff the whole man down the garbage disposal, so don’t ask me to do it.

I daresay you’ve broken bread (seriously?) with many people you no longer call your friend. It’s not impossible.

@161:

That’s another problem: he is the face of atheism to most of the world. I don’t expect perfection, but it would be helpful if the flaws weren’t so deep and so damaging to broader social causes…so we face the difficult choice of jettisoning a strongly entrenched representative of atheism
or persuading said representative that his analysis is wrong. Which is easier?

If you weren’t so invested in him as a person, you might realise that persuading Dawkins of anything is nigh impossible. Jettisoning him as the face of atheism would be a lot easier if every thread on the man didn’t have to have, by apparent law, some percentage of wanking about what a great boon to the world he is as a scientist and how his talent with the written word makes one curl their toes with rapturous scientific delight.

Or maybe I’m just the only person who read The God Delusion and wasn’t overcome with emotion due to his MDMA-like sentence structure.

If Dawkins would just realize that he gets himself into trouble every time he talks about rape, and decided that hey, maybe he ought to find other analogies to use that are NOT RAPE, then things would be a lot easier on everyone (including him). There’s no reason that he has to keep going back to that well over and over. The world doesn’t need his opinion on absolutely every topic in the world. We can survive without his opinion on rape, and without his attempts to use rape as an analogy for other things he wants to talk about.

OK, reading it again, my second comment sounds pretty high-falutin and arrogant. There was a lot of intellectual fire power around me in North Carolina as well (they don’t call it the Research Triangle for nothing). But Dawkins was a guiding light of sorts.

I’m the one who brought up Dawkins being the face of atheism to many people. He is, which is why his beliefs are so problematic, and cause so much damage. I don’t think any one person can change his status as a latter day Darwin’s Bulldog.

What do you think would happen if PZ publicly disavowed his friendship with Dawkins? Given that a majority of people who hang on Dawkins’ every word also dislike PZ, what would be accomplished? I’m asking because it’s plain to me that PZ doesn’t think or feel that Dawkins is a hero, or perfect, or anything like that.

If Dawkins would just realize that he gets himself into trouble every time he talks about rape, and decided that hey, maybe he ought to find other analogies to use that are NOT RAPE, then things would be a lot easier on everyone (including him). There’s no reason that he has to keep going back to that well over and over.

I find it hard to believe he’s unaware of this. At this point, it seems like he simply delights in fucking with rape survivors.

At this point, it seems like he simply delights in fucking with rape survivors.

You could be right. Myself, I think it’s more a case of genuine belief, that a majority of rape really isn’t all that bad, it’s just sex, y’know. He’s far from the only person to believe that, and insist on that belief being correct. (Paglia comes to mind.)

I’m the one who brought up Dawkins being the face of atheism to many people. He is, which is why his beliefs are so problematic, and cause so much damage. I don’t think any one person can change his status as a latter day Darwin’s Bulldog.

I see. Sorry about that, PZ.

What do you think would happen if PZ publicly disavowed his friendship with Dawkins? Given that a majority of people who hang on Dawkins’ every word also dislike PZ, what would be accomplished? I’m asking because it’s plain to me that PZ doesn’t think or feel that Dawkins is a hero, or perfect, or anything like that.

I really dunno. I agree it wouldn’t make much of a difference. I guess we’re stuck with him, and the atheism he’s popularised, and the people he empowers with his thought experiments.

At this point, it seems like he simply delights in fucking with rape survivors.

As uncharitable as this seems, it’s also not far off the mark. He’s been trolling marginalized people and those who would support them for years. Rape victims, Muslims whose countries we’ve destabilized or destroyed, Jewish victims of anti-Semitism, opponents of racism, it doesn’t really matter; the script is the same. Punch down, stir outcry, handwring over the irrationality of your critics, rinse, repeat.

“If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend I hope I should have the guts to betray my country” — E.M. Forster

That’s inappropriate to this discussion. This isn’t a matter of betrayal, unless one is talking about Mr. Dawkins betraying whole swaths of people by dismissing them and their experiences as non-relevant.

I find it hard to believe he’s unaware of this. At this point, it seems like he simply delights in fucking with rape survivors.

I don’t think I’d go so far as that he’s actually knowingly taking pleasure from fucking with rape survivors but he certainly does seem to have the bit in his teeth on this topic. Like, he doesn’t see the problem with these analogies (just intellectual exercises, doncha know; why’s everyone so angry?!) so he’s going to keep using them on principle. Not that it’s a meaningful distinction but he does seem more clueless than malicious to me.

You could be right. Myself, I think it’s more a case of genuine belief, that a majority of rape really isn’t all that bad, it’s just sex, y’know. He’s far from the only person to believe that, and insist on that belief being correct. (Paglia comes to mind.)

As I’m sure you know, most jurisdictions distinguish between first and second degree murder. A common definition appears to be that a premeditated act, with intent to kill, is first degree. If the intent to kill was present at the time of the act, but was not premeditated, it may be second degree. The difference in sentencing can be significant.

I find it hard to believe he’s unaware of this. At this point, it seems like he simply delights in fucking with rape survivors.

I think he honestly believes he knows more than everyone else about it. I think that he’s been told how smart he is for so long that he just can’t comprehend the idea that there are things that other people understand better than he does.

You’re criticizing that Vulcan mind-set, while demanding that I ignore my all-too-human personal connections to condemn someone. I can’t. And I know you can, because you’ve never broken bread with him, and I can appreciate that too. All I can do is continue to criticize and reject the wrong things he says, but I can’t quite stuff the whole man down the garbage disposal, so don’t ask me to do it.

Yah. I’m there. I admit that there was a person with whom I made friends long ago. I noticed the person’s racism, but my response was to steer conversations away from anything that might lead to discussing race. That was fairly easy because this person had an interesting education/work background that didn’t have anything to do with people. We ended up living in different parts of the city and seeing each other much less but still positively. Eventually one of my other friends told me he was surprised I still was friends with this person. He had thought that I had stopped seeing racist friend altogether, b/c racism. I thought about how much work I had to do to avoid this topic and that, and realized that racism really did shape our friendship in significant ways. I dropped racist friend from the friend rolls, but I realized how much being white made it possible for that friendship to linger on as long as it did.

At no time did I stop condemning racism. I in fact had words with racist friends a few times, and sided with others in my social circle when racist friend was trying to defend racist behavior. But racist friend was always (and is still) more than racist to me. An interesting conversation partner, someone who knows much about topics where I’m ignorant but curious, etc.

I get it.

I’m very happy that you’re willing to publicly criticize public behavior. Some of us will be more or less upset that a private friendship continues, but it is, whatever our feelings, quite humanly normal to continue friendships even where we disagree with harmful behaviors of our friends.

I also want to throw in something else.

We talk about not making monsters out of people who do bad things. I don’t think we’re dehumanizing Dawkins here, but I do think that shunning is a problematic response.

Shunning is an extreme measure. It is a last resort. We are a social species, we need other people, and deliberately pushing someone out of a community is a strong and harsh response to bad behavior. Accepting human imperfection, accepting that everyone screws up and does things we have serious problems with, and being willing to move forward from that, is absolutely necessary if we’re going to live and work together.

Shunning is an extreme measure. But if we are never willing to do it, even in the face of the most despicable behavior, we are saying that we will tolerate anything. Literally anything.

I don’t know PZ, but as GC says, this is a difficult situation. I’m going to trust him on when to give up, if ever, on Dawkins the person. I hope that others are willing to let PZ figure that part out for himself as well.

Dawkins seems (to me) likely to be acting from ignorance and thoughtlessness. In that sense, I agree with his (more reasonable) defenders. The real ethical problem that I have with him is that we have more than enough evidence to conclude that this ignorance is willful ignorance. There may be some that think he’s acting from a desire to hurt in the moment as he’s tweeting. But I think most of us aren’t in that place. I think most of us are troubled with the ethical choices that maintain this ignorance and his post-criticism use of ignorance as a defense.

There’s this great moment he describes in one of his books, I think the God Delusion. Some scientist (I don’t remember the name if it was given) hadn’t believed Golgi bodies truly existed. He thought, I don’t know, they were dust on the microscope lens or random, non-functional bits of fluff or whatever. Anything but actual Golgi bodies. Then he’s proved wrong and sees the evidence in a lecture and, after the lecture, goes up to the lecturer and says thank you for giving me this information, I’ve been wrong for many years.

Dawkins can and should do this when people give him information about rape and other things. I’m far from having read any and all apologetic statements of his. Maybe he does this sometimes. But having made clear he knows exactly how to respond when wrong, having been given information, analysis, and resources on the same or similar topics many times before, having made deliberate choices to ignore those opportunities for gaining knowledge, and having repeated a similar mistake, his use of the “good intentions” and “ignorance” defenses are, in fact, offensive.

His intentions aren’t good when he chooses willful ignorance. His continued ignorance only reminds his critics – gentle critics years ago, impatient and strident today – of his intentional choices in between his problematic public statements.

Those of us who aren’t personal friends with the man get quite tired of a man who has so clearly spelled out that he knows exactly how one best responds to being in the wrong, acting so very contrary. We are left with a very difficult choice:

Is Dawkins refusing to give an honest apology and make honest efforts to change his behavior even though he knows that he is hurting people with his public statements? That would be malevolent behavior.

Is Dawkins declining to act in the way that he knows one should when one is in the wrong **because he does not believe he is in the wrong**? That would make the limited apologies we get insincere and would mean that he either refuses to believe the testimony of people who have said that they are hurt by his statements OR he believes that he should be able to hurt people with impunity. Ignoring the hurt of others – because you believe you know better than they whether they were hurt or because you don’t care whether they were hurt – while publicly mouthing self-serving apologies you don’t believe is sociopathic behavior.

It’s no wonder that others frequently have a hard time with his public statements. I’d be gratified if I saw him simply say, “Look, I’ve been wrong, and I’ve been wrong too many times. It’s finally been made clear that I don’t really know how to speak about trans* issues, feminism, rape, and sexual assault. I’m going to stay away from saying anything about them in the foreseeable future not because I no longer believe that they need attention, but because I believe I’m not the best person to give them that attention. If I somehow do slip up and discuss, tweet, or retweet something directly on these topics, I fully intend to apologize immediately and simply with the words, ‘I was wrong’. You are welcome to hold me accountable for any behavior different from that.”

You’re criticizing that Vulcan mind-set, while demanding that I ignore my all-too-human personal connections to condemn someone. I can’t. And I know you can, because you’ve never broken bread with him, and I can appreciate that too. All I can do is continue to criticize and reject the wrong things he says, but I can’t quite stuff the whole man down the garbage disposal, so don’t ask me to do it.

It must be extremely difficult gor you, given your relationship to Dawkins, but at some point it becomes necessary to recognise that opinion about certain topics held by a person speak to the charcater of that person. As noted by others on the thread, Dawkins’ anti-feminism, attempts to define ‘levels of rape’, troubling HBD connections, and knee-jerk hostility toward all criticism are not one pffs or somehow new and exceptional behavious – they form a consistent course of dealing.

As I’m sure you know, most jurisdictions distinguish between first and second degree murder. A common definition appears to be that a premeditated act, with intent to kill, is first degree. If the intent to kill was present at the time of the act, but was not premeditated, it may be second degree. The difference in sentencing can be significant.

And perhaps once we no longer have to convince people that rape is actually “A Thing” at all we can discuss whether evidence of premeditation ought to be treated as an aggravating factor in sentencing (if it isn’t already?). It seems to me that rape is pretty much inherently premeditated, though…

I think he honestly believes he knows more than everyone else about it. I think that he’s been told how smart he is for so long that he just can’t comprehend the idea that there are things that other people understand better than he does.

Sounds like a career in atheism and science isn’t good for the brain after all.

As I’m sure you know, most jurisdictions distinguish between first and second degree murder.

How about you drop this, right now? It’s not at all relevant, and it doesn’t shore up Dawkins’ ideas about rape. One more time, rape is rape. It’s a deep fault in society that there is still an underlying foundation of bad reasoning based on patriarchy and misogyny that people keep trying to class rape, and still indulge in victim blaming to the nth degree.

You’re probably right as well, but if that’s the case, can we all stop pretending he’s good for science in general?

Right on. I’ve found Dawkins to be snide and callous for about as long as I’ve been aware of his existence (4-5 years now maybe?). Definitely before E-Gate and Dear Muslima. I’m really pretty fucking over people taking such great pains to reassure us about what a swell guy Dawkins is in between bouts of raging douchebaggery.

“If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend I hope I should have the guts to betray my country” — E.M. Forster

Who’s betraying what, now? Shouldn’t I feel betrayed by a person who’s supposedly my “representative” and the very “face of atheism”? Is there some official process I don’t know about which removes him from office, or is there only the one that got him in?

That’s what I want know at the moment. But after you get around to that, I also want to know: has anybody has asked for betrayal? That he be personally and totally dumped down the metaphorical garbage disposal? Or is that all a giant load of bullshit?

PZ, I hope you have the opportunity to have a private discussion with Dawkins.

I don’t believe for a moment that a private discussion would do anything useful. PZ’s saying it’s damned near impossible to change his mind, no matter what reckless and stupid drivel comes out of Dawkins’ head, so I figure Dawkins is at least as resistant to rational persuasion if not more so.

@204 That’s a very thoughtful comment, but surely there’s a meaningful distinction between shunning an ordinary person and working to reduce the influence of someone who’s abusing a powerful position of authority?

(as an aside, I’ve long thought that anecdote about the scientist who was grateful for being corrected was Dawkins at his most disingenuous; that’s the opposite of how Dawkins handles correction, yet by holding this apocryphal scientist up as how good scientists behave, he gets all of this cred as a proponent of neutral objectivity, as if such a thing even exists)

as someone who has worked and written in this field for quite a long time, I have to, horrifyingly, agree with this:

a majority of rape really isn’t all that bad, it’s just sex, y’know.

Why isn’t it that bad? Because having been raped repeatedly over time, I can tell you that the lifetime damage done to me probably wasn’t that much worse after the 14th rape than after the 13, or after the 28th than after the 27th.

A huge number of people are raped in the context of abusive relationships – private/family relationships, relationships of prisoner and guard, relationships between someone and a caretaker, whatever. In those contexts, repetition of the rape is common. I doubt I’m the only one who through a combination of resignation and detachment managed to get up the morning after a rape and go to work like nothing unusual had happened.

Hell, nothing unusual had happened – it was just another rape that happened on at least a weekly basis.

Some rapes are traumatic. Some rapes are horrible. Some rapes are life changing.

As I’m sure you know, most jurisdictions distinguish between first and second degree murder. A common definition appears to be that a premeditated act, with intent to kill, is first degree. If the intent to kill was present at the time of the act, but was not premeditated, it may be second degree. The difference in sentencing can be significant.

Yes I do know that. And I’m failing to see how that’s analogous to the assholes who make distinctions like “legitimate rape.”

Yes. That doesn’t mean those rapes are just sex or anything, but a person can get resigned and accustomed to rape on a regular basis. It’s how you survive.

Six years of being raped weekly when I was a child. That’s where most of the roots of my PTSD come from. For those six years, it was Tuesday. Something to endure. A chore to get through. Then I could get out for a while, and play pretend that Tuesdays didn’t happen.

Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaidensays

Oh, heavens, I didn’t at all mean to imply that those rapes are not rape and are instead “sex”. Thank you for saying this clearly. I mean, I’m sure you didn’t take me to be saying that, but thank you for clarifying it for anyone else who may be reading.

Good thing you’re somehow magically a good person. Must be due to your great soul or something, because a materialist with a scientific understanding of the world would look at your behaviour and conclude that you’re actually a remorseless piece of shit.

@Inaji #173
I wasn’t trying to say that there are different “kinds” of rape, as if the “kind” of rape deterministically predicted how bad a person’s experience is. Rather, I’d prefer to expand the narratives of how people react to it, regardless of the “kind”. What you and Crip Dyke said about some rapes being tuesday, that’s what I was trying to get at, although maybe I can’t phrase it correctly.

My personal interest in this is that there have been a couple times where I was assaulted and it just bounced off me. And then there was another time where I was assaulted and it was really bad. I don’t know, I wish I could talk more openly about the different experiences there but I worry about saying something wrong and I guess it wasn’t that important.

It’s not anyone’s place to tell someone to abandon one of their friends. You don’t know them personally. People have flaws, Dawkins is arrogant and has a problem admitting he might possibly be wrong about anything, but there are plenty of people like that that I’m related to and I deal with it. I try to educate them as best I can, but I unless they were a seriously abusive and sociopathic person, I accept them flaws and all.

Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaidensays

My personal interest in this is that there have been a couple times where I was assaulted and it just bounced off me. And then there was another time where I was assaulted and it was really bad. I don’t know, I wish I could talk more openly about the different experiences there but I worry about saying something wrong and I guess it wasn’t that important.

It’s clearly important – to you directly and to any community you inhabit indirectly since a healthy miller is better able to contribute to any community.

I won’t say, “don’t worry” or “don’t be afraid”. I think that the concern about saying something wrong is just basic human empathy in action. We don’t get upset at form here. Saying something “wrong” on Pharyngula really only means saying something the content of which is hurtful to others.

But even if I can’t say, “don’t worry,” I can say that if you’re talking about your experiences of your assaults, and not speaking in categorical ways about assault, you’ll be fine. Also, even if you’re not fine, we tend to be fiercely protective of people in those vulnerable moments, so criticism, should it come, would be likely to be phrased gently.

Of course I can’t guarantee any particular outcome, but many survivors have spoken about difficult things here before and come out the better for it.

If you’re still on the fence, you can take it to the Lounge – that space is designed for gentle handling, and people will be even more cautious and supportive in how they approach you. Work out your thoughts there, and then post here (or not) as you wish.

That’s a very thoughtful comment, but surely there’s a meaningful distinction between shunning an ordinary person and working to reduce the influence of someone who’s abusing a powerful position of authority?

There is. But there seems to be some discussion of PZ not being friends with Dawkins. The process by which PZ, a friend of Dawkins, would make that decision is a shunning decision, and when we judge PZ, we should consider his decisions about his friendship with Dawkins in that light.

I wish I could talk more openly about the different experiences there but I worry about saying something wrong and I guess it wasn’t that important.

If it’s important to you, then it’s important, full stop. I understand what you’re saying, and I’m sorry I jumped, I misread you completely.

I do think there’s value in talking about, and understanding, how and why our experiences affect us in different ways. Where I have problems talking in public fora is just how much people can take what you say and warp the hell out of it. I do know what you mean though. In a way, I was able to focus on survival and deal with the rape when I was 16 much better because of the six years of childhood rape. I had become a master of self control at that point. The rape and attempted murder when I was 16 was the worst, when it comes to other peoples’ viewpoint, and the legal system, yada, yada, yada. The one that actually affected me the most mentally and emotionally didn’t even involve penile penetration, but it’s the one I blame myself the most for, so yeah.

It’s not anyone’s place to tell someone to abandon one of their friends.

Who is actually advocating that?

I’m not saying PZ has to send him a Dear Dick letter. I could do without PZ asserting that he’s a good person, though, in the face of all the evidence to the contrary, though.

PZ can be pals with whatever shitheads he wants. Don’t tell me the shithead isn’t a shithead because you go way back. That’s all.

People have flaws

Like Hitler. Can I compare to Hitler? They both had flaws. I’d willing to admit, using super logic, that Hitler is worse than Dawkins, but that doesn’t make Dawkins not a shithead. Dawkins can explain why.

Dawkins is arrogant and has a problem admitting he might possibly be wrong about anything, but there are plenty of people like that that I’m related to and I deal with it.

You truly are an amazing person then.

I try to educate them as best I can, but I unless they were a seriously abusive and sociopathic person, I accept them flaws and all.

See above, but I’m confused: why can’t abusive and sociopathic persons use the “people have flaws” defence? Why don’t you accept them, warts and all?

Anyway, thanks for giving us all an example of how to best understand people with flaws, unless they’re a certain type of person with flaws who doesn’t deserve that. Could you maybe put it in a pdf for handy distribution and reference later?

You may notice that Peter Warren’s ‘contributions’ have all disappeared. It turns out that he’s a sock puppet for a previously banned sexist ass named Paul Bell, so his latest incursion has been wiped, as will any future attempts to sneak around the ban.

I have not said that he is “secretly a good person”. I don’t have “secret friend information”. We aren’t even good friends — we have professional similarities and often meet at events. I have admitted to a personal bias, and I don’t excuse it at all.

Similarly, I was friendly with Michael Shermer and Brian Dunning — I’ve actually had pleasant encounters with them. What happens is a typical human failing, and this may be hard to believe, but I’m a terrible optimist about human nature. I have to get slapped around a bunch of times by reality before I wake up.

The slapping is in progress, straight from Dawkins. I don’t need rabbit punches from everyone else on top of things.

And again, if you read the OP, do you see me making excuses for his words? Have I done anything but say they were wrong? Have I anywhere suggested that there is some secret mysterious meaning that makes them all right?

But there seems to be some discussion of PZ not being friends with Dawkins. The process by which PZ, a friend of Dawkins, would make that decision is a shunning decision, and when we judge PZ, we should consider his decisions about his friendship with Dawkins in that light.

That’s totally fair, and a relevant distinction. I guess I wasn’t seeing the discussion so much in terms of whether PZ should be friends with Dawkins (which is none of my goddamn business) as whether PZ’s friendship with Dawkins is leading him to publicly defend the indefensible. Not Dawkins’ specific comments here, which PZ has very clearly denounced, but the overall “goodness” and “rightness” of Dawkins’ contributions to various discourses, which PZ inexplicably continues to argue for.

I have not said that he is “secretly a good person”. I don’t have “secret friend information”. We aren’t even good friends — we have professional similarities and often meet at events. I have admitted to a personal bias, and I don’t excuse it at all.

So what’s with the constant “good stuff I do know about him” very time he comes up? Nobody’s a monster, yet the world is full of assholes this blog has no problem calling out without having to mention all their good qualities.

I have to get slapped around a bunch of times by reality before I wake up.

Wake up then.

The slapping is in progress, straight from Dawkins.

Gosh, that must be so hard for you.

I don’t need rabbit punches from everyone else on top of things.

We’ll see if they get through to you, since Dawkins’ continual slaps haven’t, after what, three fucking years?

Not speaking for anyone else, obviously, but for me, the argument that he just sounds like a far-right wingnut, but isn’t one really, despite his defending members of a fascist, anti-Semitic group after they harassed a local synagogue, his promotion of HBD-esque racism and sexism, his rampant Islamophobia, his disgusting attacks on Steve Rose and other anti-racist scientists, etc ad nauseum, sounds like special pleading. Everything you say about needing to be slapped upside the head repeatedly before someone proves to you that your initial positive opinion of them is changed is understandable, and even commendable. But you have defended him personally in ways that just don’t jive with his public persona, which implies to me that you, as his friend (or friendly acquaintance), know things that we don’t.

One of my biggest problems with Dawkins, that I haven’t really seen addressed specifically very often, is that he wants all the perks of being “a leader of the atheist movement” without any of the responsibilities. He seems to really like getting paid a lot of money to write books, go on TV, give speeches, create Global Thought Leader Thinky Dood groups that need tons of donations. He’s really keen on being seen as a representative of a larger group… but he seems to have zero interest in actually representing that group in a way that is positive for all the members of that group.

Look, I’m not saying I could do it. I’m actually saying the opposite: I am fundamentally ill-suited to be the public face for any group. I can be charming and charismatic in person, and I’m a really good public speaker. I’m also piss-poor at being diplomatic, I like doing drunk karaoke, and I’ve got all sorts of other traits that would make me terrible as a representative of even my own interests let alone that of a pretty large group. I also know my own… Richard Dawkins is ALSO completely terrible as a representative of any atheist movement and should put aside his ego rather than wreck it for everyone.

O. *armflail*
You are less raped, if it’s by someone you know, rather than a stranger? Just as you are less murdered, if it’s by someone you know, rather than a stranger? Less raped when drugged unconscious, then after a good beating? Less murdered when drugged to overdose, then hell, I dunno—dismembered with a chainsaw? I mean, if we’re doing Infinite Degrees of Felony? Gah!!
–

So what’s with the constant “good stuff I do know about him” very time he comes up?

I haven’t said anything like that. In this post, I said I knew him personally, which makes it particularly painful when he says things that are so spectacularly wrong. Again, where in this post am I making excuses for his words?

And I agree that he shouldn’t be regarded as the Great Leader of Atheism — he isn’t. Same with Hitchens, great at some things, unforgivably bad at others. Don’t even bring up Harris. Putting your faith in Bwana Dawkins is as bad as having a pope.

@Anthony K
I get what you’re getting at, but come on, Hitler? Really?
I’m not amazing, I’m human. I didn’t get to choose my relatives. I have some low self-esteem issues so I’m sure that doesn’t help.
I *have* completely cut contact with one of my siblings, which was incredibly hard. So yes, of course there are limits. I know from personal experience, and it’s awful. It took a lot but I finally had to face that he was just manipulative and abusive and had to come to terms with the fact that it wasn’t a flaw, it was his personality and I couldn’t change it.
So I do know what it’s like to finally have to completely write someone off.

@Tony
I know they’re harmful attitudes He thinks that saying date rape and “mild” pedophilia are bad things is sufficient enough to allow him to pontificate on levels of bad and worse. Which is ludicrous. Then he has the nerve to complain about the “vitriol” leveled at poor him, which makes him the real victim in all this.

But you can get through to people, especially friends and loved ones. Sometimes it takes a lot, but it’s not impossible.

I have an aunt, we were talking once when I was a teenager and she was saying how horrible it was hearing about children being abducted and raped. Then she added, not like those gross women who walk around with their cleavage showing and everything hanging out. I swear, normally I’m intimidated by my aunt, but I was so disgusted with what she said I completely forgot myself and really told her off. I finished saying absolutely nobody deserves to be raped. She looked stunned and embarrassed. She was caught saying something cruel and stupid and she actually realized it. Maybe she never thought it through before and accepted things she’s been told. She didn’t double down, she apologized and agreed that of course, no one “deserves” to be raped, ever.

BTW… I wrote off my own brothers years ago for being variously abusive towards me and my parents. I wouldn’t ask anyone to consider doing anything I wouldn’t do. Dawkins isn’t anyone’s brother here, and he’s not a friend to us either when it comes down to it.

PZ”… this may be hard to believe, but I’m a terrible optimist about human nature. I have to get slapped around a bunch of times by reality before I wake up.”

I don’t know the origins, but I’m pretty much the same way. And even after being knocked in the head (literally and figuratively) I still manage to think human beings are basically good and decent underneath it all.

Did someone actually say that if you make a distinction between “date rape” and “stranger rape with knife” it means you endorse date rape?

If so, and Dawkins wants to make a Holy Crusade out of defending the god-given right to make the distinction (for some reason), then Dawkins would have a beef with that individual who made the offending statement, and he should take it up with them. This whole business of attacking a whole movement over dumb shit like this makes him look like a dumb shit.

PZ”… this may be hard to believe, but I’m a terrible optimist about human nature. I have to get slapped around a bunch of times by reality before I wake up.”

I don’t know the origins, but I’m pretty much the same way. And even after being knocked in the head (literally and figuratively) I still manage to think human beings are basically good and decent underneath it all.

This is why I asked where PZ draws the line. I have a completely different experience and metric of people. I’ve cut off my entire family except my mother. And my mother’s husband is still banned from being with my child and I. I’ve had to stop being friends with people who associated with assholes and didn’t listen when I said I don’t want to talk/hang out with that other person.

It’s not about thinking they’re monsters or evil or unreachable. It’s the simple fact my time and energy is limited as well as my patience. If they don’t listen and change, it’s not my job to use my head breaking down a brick wall. I’ve had enough of that, thank you very much.

Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaidensays

Who gives a shit what PZ happens to value in Dawkins? How many posts have you seen in the last year whose purpose was to praise Dawkins? How many have criticized him? Do you really think that a turn of phrase somewhere in unweaving the rainbow made PZ write a single less critical post about Dawkins?

PZ gets to be accountable for PZ’s choices. Right now your level of anger doesn’t come across as at all proportional to anything PZ’s done, nor have you even identified a specific decision or piece of writing with which you take issue.

I’ll do that:

really like Richard Dawkins, personally and professionally, although a lot of readers here get indignant at that.

This came across as jarring. in particular, the “indignant” bit. If he had only said the first 1/2 and then moved into “that’s way this shit sucks”, I would have been fine with it, but second half comes across defensive.

I didn’t like it.

But I didn’t see anything wrong with his actual critique of Dawkins, and the defensiveness can easily be seen as defensiveness on his own behalf, not on Dawkins. in fact, I think that’s the fair reading, but given that defensiveness has to be read in to begin with, I think it wouldn’t be totally unreasonable to read some defensiveness on behalf of Dawkins there.

So what level of accountability is there for including, in a long piece calling out specific bad acts for specific reasons, half a sentence of content that arguably, but not probably, is somewhat defensive of Dawkins in a general way?

Now, there may be a long history of PZ including even more defensive-of-Dawkins statements. You can quote them or cite them or even allude to them. But let’s do this crap a way that respects the seriousness of the underlying issues. Point to the most upsetting shit, and if you think the why isn’t obvious, tell us the why.

(And I will be honest, I was still furious at Dawkins for retweeting Sommers link to Michelle Goldberg’s fawning and whitewahing article about TERFs.)

Really? I totally missed that. Another reason for me to say fuck him. That article was horrible. I could barely get through it. I only managed because I read the Parker Molloy version with commentary. So fuck Michelle Goldberg as well. And fuck Sommers.

Did someone actually say that if you make a distinction between “date rape” and “stranger rape with knife” it means you endorse date rape?

No, apparently there was a discussion of the recent joint statement with Ophelia, and he was commenting on others’ critiques of his various statements and inactions, and felt it was relevant to tell us that the statement X is worse than Y doesn’t not imply that Y is acceptable. (It actually doesn’t imply that X is unacceptable either, but I think he was using this in a context where the relevant X was clearly unacceptable).

In order to clarify his point, he thought he’d make distinctions between kinds of rape, using the assumption that one kind of rape is worse than another.

I told myself that I was lucky. I didn’t have it “that” bad. I still do. I still feel shame for occasionally feeling pain and anger over it. Why, I was even familiar with my abuser. So, in the grand scheme of things, shouldn’t I be fine and dandy and if I’m not, isn’t it just my own fault or flaw, as I feared so often as a kid? I first thought of suicide at age 9. I have not felt close to my mother since she decided I made it up to get attention or to hurt her. It must not have been hard thinking something was wrong with me or that it was my fault. It couldn’t have left any lasting damage, Dawkins said so. After all, what happened to me was only “mild”.

Fuck Dawkins. He is not a good person. He is not a representative of mine just because I’m atheist.

I respected him once. I felt I owed him something for having a popular book that changed the way I thought of belief. I know better now. He’s a callus fool I want no truck with and who deserves no more respect or charity for his ridiculous, harmful beliefs than he thinks religious people do. He certainly has none to spare for the victims of abuse he has deemed “mild”. We all know from “Dear Muslima” what he thinks of people who stand up to mistreatment or dare to have feels about being mistreated when there is worse mistreatment somewhere in the world.

I’ve never even been able to discuss my abuse in therapy. That’s how “mild” it was.
Seriously, fuck that guy.

TRIGGER WARNG RAPE
Also, fuck him for sending the message to acquaintance rapists and kiddie diddlers that what they do to people isn’t as bad as what other rapists and child molesters do. He’s telling the guy who slipped his childhood friend a roofie at a party and then raped her, that he’s not like that guy in the alley people always think of when someone says “rapist”. He’s telling the boys who called my friend over in middle school to play video games and then raped her that they didn’t really hurt her that much because they were her friends and they didn’t use a knife, just numbers and being bigger than her. She walked home afterward with no broken bones. He’s giving them an authority who says, “Hey, if you just rub one off on the kid, they’ll be fine. At least you didn’t put it in the kid’s ass, buddy. Good for you!” He’s telling the Shermers of the world that they aren’t “really” rapists as sure as Todd Akin did. At worst their are rapists-lites. He’s telling their victims the same thing. I don’t care how good he is at writing about biology or who associates him with movement atheism. That man is fucking awful.

Nah, I’m willing to be called out. This is all frustrating in about ten thousand dimensions, and believe me, I’m struggling with it all. I’m a guy who’s committed to the causes of science and atheism, and seeing them undermined because some people can’t see that the ultimate cause is to improve human lives is terrible — that they seem to think becoming some kind of Vulcan is the atheist ideal, when that’s the antithesis of what I want to see.

Science is important. Seeing reality without superstition is important. When I find myself in a position where I have to reject someone who is widely seen as the standard bearer for both of those values, you can’t imagine how much it tears me up, and how I hate to see the things I care about treated as somehow sufficient, without a human element.

The seminal moment in my personal intellectual development wasn’t brought on by Dawkins, or Gould, or Sagan, or any of the hardcore scientists I respected. It was by a philosopher, when I was 16: Jacob Bronowski. I even know the moment. It was when he said this:

It’s said that science will dehumanize people and turn them into numbers. That’s false, tragically false. Look for yourself. This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance, it was done by dogma, it was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods.

Science is a very human form of knowledge. We are always at the brink of the known; we always feel forward for what is to be hoped. Every judgment in science stands on the edge of error and is personal. Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible. In the end, the words were said by Oliver Cromwell: “I beseech you in the bowels of Christ: Think it possible you may be mistaken.”

I owe it as a scientist to my friend Leo Szilard, I owe it as a human being to the many members of my family who died here, to stand here as a survivor and a witness. We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge and power. We have to close the distance between the push-button order and the human act. We have to touch people.

Here’s what also hurts. I’m kind of glad Bronowski’s dead, because I don’t think I could bear discovering that he might have been an asshole. Don’t tell me if he was.

It’s sad but true that most of the “great men” (or even just famous people) turn out to just not be very admirable. Even (or especially) in fields with as much moral authority and social capital as the sciences, the people who are held up as important too often end up being terrible human beings. What helps me deal with that fact is meeting and getting to know scientists who will probably never be famous, but who do good work and, more importantly, are good people. There are tons of them out there, and they contribute more good to both science and to the wider world than Dawkins could ever dream of.

That’ll do nothing. These are the same people who simultaneously argue that everything we do is to boost traffic, and that everything we do is destroying the evil FtB. The same people who say this is a ruthless tyranny with everyone a mindless drone simultaneously gloat that we viciously eat our own. When you hold mutually contradicting ideas, everything just confirms that you were right.

That really sucks, I’m sorry. The only similar thing for me was losing things from before becoming progressive feminist etc, like music which helped me cope. I’m incredibly glad I found Pharyngula first and don’t have to deal with crumbling heroes. I find it so much easier and can appreciate the bind you’re in. I’m very thankful that you’re criticizing him and aren’t backing down. You letting Dawkins slide would be the closest thing to a crumbling hero for me.

Hey Peez, you can’t win… because you’re trapped between a bunch of conflicting urges and I hope most of the people who know and respect you can understand that. None of this can be easy for you, and I totally sympathize with that.

I respect you enough to tell you that I think even your half-way defense of Dawkins is wrong, but I also get it that you like him personally and professionally enough to want to cut him some slack. I also get that you care enough about movement atheism and the atheist community that you won’t tear down an icon lightly. Dawkins brought a lot of people to movement atheism, and he brought a lot of attention to that cause that we care about. He’s written a lot of books that have been very influential and inspirational, and created tons of debate in places where atheism never got a voice before. There’s a lot of clear good that you can attach to Richard Dawkins.

On the other hand, he’s currently and actively causing harm now, and that harm is amplified BECAUSE OF the good he’s done before. He’s using the good things he’s said, and that you support, in order to advance negative ideas that are hurting lots of people. He created a podium based on things you care about, and now that he has it he’s saying things that you know you don’t support. And as long as you make excuses or try to explain away the worst of his abusive behavior, you’re supporting the worst things he says based on whatever good he’s done in the past.

PZ, I know you like and respect Dawkins. I get it. You’ve got to let it go, because I honestly believe that you and him have too many opposing values. I think you’re on the right side of too many things that he’s one the wrong side of, for you to ever make a legitimate defense of Dawkins unless/until he makes a significant change.

We already have a murder scale with all sorts of categories. If you kill someone you can get anything from a medal to executed. We expect soldiers to kill people. If they get serious about “Thou shall not kill” or the less theistic “I’d wouldn’t want to be killed, so I shouldn’t kill anyone”, that’s grounds for separation from the service. Then there are all the legal categories of accidents, self defense, manslaughter in various degrees, murder in various degrees depending on the level of intent, how heinous the crime was, and so on.

I think Dawkins is an ass, but that level of murder chart isn’t really useful in the argument. Law students often wind up studying charts of how murdered someone is.

Jonny Johnson:
People are upset because Dawkins’ words diminish the impact of rape by ranking them. *All* rape is bad. There is no rape that worse than another rape. Ranking them only serves to dismiss some types of rape as “not as bad” as other types of rape. Engage your empathy. Think about how that would make a rape victim feel.

Maybe I’m missing some context or something, but I still don’t understand why people are getting so upset about this.

Upset about what? About Dawkins pontificating incorrectly on subjects he knows little about? About his insistence on classifying rapes? About people who are desperately tired of Dawkins causing widespread harm?

Dawkins isn’t nattering on to himself, he isn’t in a vacuum. A whole lot of people pay attention to what he says, and a whole lot of people justify abhorrent attitudes based on things he [Dawkins] says. If a person is paying attention, there’s a whole lot to be upset about.

We already have a murder scale with all sorts of categories. If you kill someone you can get anything from a medal to executed. We expect soldiers to kill people. If they get serious about “Thou shall not kill” or the less theistic “I’d wouldn’t want to be killed, so I shouldn’t kill anyone”, that’s grounds for separation from the service. Then there are all the legal categories of accidents, self defense, manslaughter in various degrees, murder in various degrees depending on the level of intent, how heinous the crime was, and so on.

I think Dawkins is an ass, but that level of murder chart isn’t really useful in the argument. Law students often wind up studying charts of how murdered someone is.

You’re missing the point. Murder is different because it’s differentiated on intent to kill or self-defense and such.
None of that is applicable to rape. You can’t rank it that way. The chart shows murders as people rank rape: physical harm is the only harm. It’s not the rape they’re concerned about. It’s the physical assault while ignoring the bodily violation of rape.

And for your last sentence, that’s one fucked up way to look at it. Murdered is murdered. Dead is dead. The punishment is based on the killer not “how murdered someone is”. The dead ain’t arguing which murder was worse and I fail to see why you’d talk like “oh, he wasn’t that murdered.”

Law students often wind up studying charts of how murdered someone is.

Which utterly ignores the fact that we live in societies where it’s automatic for people to decide just how raped someone was. We live in societies in which the onus for being raped is still most often placed upon the person who was raped, not the rapist.

Rape victims are victimized over and over again, by the judgements of others, by those who will default to the age old blame game – somehow or another, a person who was raped must have caused it to happen. This judgement is overwhelmingly harsh in cases of date or acquaintance rape. Even children who are raped are often subjected to this judgement, accused of being seductive and so on. The only time a rape is considered to be a legitimate rape [by a majority of people] is when it’s a stranger rape, which also involves considerable physical violence, especially if there’s a weapon involved.

If a rape victim decides to report their rape, they are often subjected to a mountain of shit from cops and attorneys, who place more blame on the victims, and spend a good deal of time trying to determine whether or not you belong in the ‘slut’ or ‘they were asking for it’ categories.

Many rapists are barely slapped on the wrist, if convicted at all. The attitudes of “oh, hey, drunk” and “boys will be boys” and “well, they are in prison so they probably deserved it” are embedded in societies. Many people feel that rape is an okay way to control women. And so on. Believe me, it goes on. And on.

Too many rapists continue walking about because of such attitudes, one of which is the persistent notion that unless a rape involves a great deal of physical violence, it just can’t really be that bad, and rape victims shouldn’t be so whiny about it. It was just sex, eh.*

*If you haven’t read the earlier comments about this, I suggest you do.

Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaidensays

Amanda Marcotte’s article implicitly accepts the premise that “rape by stranger at knifepoint” is worse than “date rape,” and focuses her argument on the fact that feminists have no problem saying that some crimes are worse than others.

But I question the premise, at least in some instances. I can imagine some people, at least after the fact, being more traumatized by the sense of betrayal by someone they trusted, the guilt and shame of blaming yourself for trusting the wrong person, etc. Not they should feel that way, or even that most people would, but it’s a possibility.

Right, and a so-called date rape could also be a lot more physically violent than a stranger rape at gunpoint. But because it involves an acquaintance, it allows the rape apologists to cast all kinds of aspersions and blame on the victim nonetheless.

I do wish we could get it into the heads of this Praetorian Guard of Atheism™ that all these attempts to grade and to downgrade rape and all the victim blaming are bound up with notions of women’s uncleanness and Eve who tempted Adam and brought sin into the world. The manufactured assumption that acquaintance rape doesn’t count can be related to considerations of how much you might have to pay her father if it turns out to be really, really rape.

It is theocratic bollocks and it is time all these leading atheists stopped hiding behind it.

If it were not so painful to deal with, this would be the perfect example of why dictionary atheism is not enough. Leaping to that one there is “no is god” conclusion may feel very liberating but we are not really free, not until we have got rid of all that baggage, whether from our own lives as believers or from living in a society steeped in such thinking.

Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden @205

His intentions aren’t good when he chooses willful ignorance. His continued ignorance only reminds his critics – gentle critics years ago, impatient and strident today – of his intentional choices in between his problematic public statements.

Willful ignorance? He wasn’t just willfully ignorant when he tweeted what he did. He was doing the clever clogs logical two step around the issues he claimed to be raising.

He chose to use the “date rape” words with all their she-only-regretted-it-in-the-morning cultural baggage. There are other common expressions that relate to rape by a person known to the victim.

Why choose “date rape” when there’s the expression rape in marriage available? That would seem to be a more vivid comparison for someone who really wants to talk about such things. We all know why. Rape in marriage has entirely different cultural baggage – betrayal and violation by someone who said they would cherish and care for you – that doesn’t allow for off-hand dismissal or diminishing of claims by victims. (And we won’t venture into armchair psychologising about why anyone would want to do such comparisons or rankings in the first place.)

Dawkins knows full well that words have meanings and that expressions have cultural context. He just might possibly have been a bit oblivious to all of those meanings and contexts the first time he ventured into this territory mumblecough years ago. Now? There are no blind spots, no excuses, no mitigations available for him or his apologists to fall back on.

He should shut up. It doesn’t matter that some uncharitable people might see this as conceding that he knows too little or is not competent to comment. He should just face the fact that his thinking, if there is any quality in it, doesn’t come across properly, let alone humanely or charitably, in the words he chooses to use to express it. His way of “being good without gods” would be to abandon this particular area of public discourse.

I think he honestly believes he knows more than everyone else about it. I think that he’s been told how smart he is for so long that he just can’t comprehend the idea that there are things that other people understand better than he does.

Combination of privilege and a tendency I’ve seen before in people who do natral science or mathematics: The firm belief that things like Sociology are disciplines where everybody gets a trophy and you can just say whatever you want, so no background or expertise needed.
Dawkins and many biologists would get rightly offended if I used some “common sense*” half-arsed and factually incorrect examples from biology. Whatever criticism I’d get would be well-earned.
But there are two major differences: 1) my words are unlikely to have a direct negative effect on anybody.
2) I have nowhere near the same clout as people like Dawkins

I do think that Dawkins would be a lot more likely to listen to his friend PZ than he would listen to a PZ who has publicly disavowed him.

How well did that work in the past?

PZ
I think that everybody here understands that it is a difficult situation for you. I think everybody here has those people in their lives whom they like very much, whom they even love, but who have very shitty ideas. And it’s each person’s job to deal with that. But it means that we all need to face the consequences of our own choices.
There’s a lot of privilege in your choice. After all, Dawkins regularly punches down on people with whom you sympathise, whose struggles you support, but who are not you. You can still put those things aside and enjoy a nice evening with him because you are not a member of those group.

Similarly, I was friendly with Michael Shermer and Brian Dunning — I’ve actually had pleasant encounters with them.

That privilege I was talking above? This is it. Those people are friendly to you and probably perfectly pleasant. And it speaks for you that you actually DO believe those whose experiences are different.
Long time ago, I had a conversation with my husband about one of his colleagues. All his female colleagues said the guy was a total ass, but he couldn’t agree with them because to him he was always perfectly nice. I looked at him and reminded him that this might be due to the fact that he is not a 120 lbs young woman. There’s the old saying that we shouldn’t judge people by how they treat their equals, but by how they treat their socially inferiors.

It’s lonely to have no one left to admire.

There’s a lot of people left to admire. People admire you, and they like you well enough to tell you when they think you’re going wrong. There’s a lot of people you can totally admire for small things. We don’t need heroes, people of great deeds. That’s a flawed understanding of human history anyway.
The person I will always admire is my grandpa: Not a great anything, but a great person and humanist. Somebody who had a very hard life but who never lost his empathy.

Mark
Don’t let the door hit you on your way out.

*guess being a male feminist somehow puts you in the female category. People feel totally entitled to your time and space*

Joe
Did that with both parents. So I know how damn hurtful this is.

CD, Inaji, Jackie
*hugs*

Jackie
Your #258 is SPOT ON

+++
Also, it’s not just Dawkins. It’s all the people who think exactly like him and who see their bullshit vindicated. If those assholes didn’t exist anymore Dawkins would be just a sad old man with internet access.

I’m going to use an example from my life to draw a comparison as I, like PZ, am starry-eyed and very reluctant to give up on someone:

A couple months ago a very emotionally abusive relationship I had been in ended. He treated me dreadfully much of the time and held abysmal attitudes towards various people and groups which embarrassed and hurt me terribly. It was all very typical of an ignorant, insecure man prone to paranoia. No matter the amount of understanding I possessed though it didn’t hurt me any less. I stuck around, thinking he’d be ready to tackle these issues and strengthen our relationship soon enough. My friends who didn’t have personal relationships with him, on the other hand, after trying to reason with me, disassociated from me. Then, after he’d destroyed any sense of self-worth I’d had he ripped out my heart, shit in the cavity and told me his feelings for me had never been real anyways. Worst part: I know I’d take him back in a second. My self-esteem is that low and I am that dependent on his approval and my optimism is that virulent.

What I’m saying is I get why PZ isn’t more critical of Dawkins. When you’ve got anything invested in someone and you’re optimistic about people it’s hard. I also know how ineffective berating someone for being hopeful about others who you are far less optimistic about is. People need to come to that conclusion in their own time. If you need to distance yourself from them in the meantime, that’s OK. I understand and forgive my friends who wanted nothing to do with me prior to getting dumped. I understand the ones who don’t want to be my friends now too because I was so wrapped up in an unhealthy relationship that I wasn’t there when they needed my friendship.

So yeah, the badgering isn’t helpful. If you can’t stomach PZ’s position on this matter, that’s OK. If you need to remove yourself for the sake of self-care, if PZ’s charitable attitude towards Dawkins is that harmful to you, that’s OK too. I think PZ, just like the result of us, needs to come to his own conclusion in his ow time even if that means getting his heart broken and losing connections.

With respect to the desire to rank trauma and assault, I wonder if it is stimulated by the way in which we so strongly link punishment to crime. We need to know how bad the wrong so we can apply the appropriate punishment on the other end. If we can’t properly quantify the trauma, we worry we apply a punishment to harsh or too lenient and that the ‘scales’ have not been balanced.

If we can ever move from a punitive view of justice to something more restorative and rehabilitative, maybe we won’t need so strong to feel we can measure trauma because balancing the scales of suffering is no longer the goal.

As a (mostly) lurker here, just dropping by from deepest darkest Galicia to offer my thanks and give my support to the many regular commentors here who have raised my consciousness about many social and equality issues.

I just had a look at Dawkins’ site and hombre does he have a fan club. Most of them explaining how superior his logical thinking is compared to those criticizing him.

I haven’t posted for a while, but I’d be keen for someone to extrapolate on the issue of murder. People here have already said murder is murder. is murder. However, within the “1st degree/premeditated” murder category there are all also degrees of severity that society conveniently ignores.

For example killing during a war, or the death penalty, or even dare I say abortion. All of these are forms of legally sanctioned/premeditated murder, and by definition society treats these as less serious than the 1st degree scenario.

This in no way changes what Dawkins has said on rape, however the argument is not as black and white as people have alluded to. Unless you believe that ALL murder is wrong, then if society agrees that SOME murder is okay then this surely does mirror Dawkins rape argument (irrespective of whether that is right or wrong).

Not trying to start a flame war, but an genuinely interested with this angle to the argument..

I haven’t posted for a while, but I’d be keen for someone to extrapolate on the issue of murder. People here have already said murder is murder. is murder. However, within the “1st degree/premeditated” murder category there are all also degrees of severity that society conveniently ignores.

Yes. Legal distinctions. Dawkins wasn’t talking about legal distinctions. He didn’t say “X crime is worse than Y crime, therefor the sentence should be more severe.” He simply said “X is worse than Y, but that doesn’t mean I endorse Y and you’re stupid if you think it does.” And, when challenged on it, he didn’t say “Nonono, I misspoke. I was talking about legal distinctions.”

Riddle me this: If someone you knew had lost a loved one to, say, vehicular manslaughter, would you say to them “But look, premeditated murder is so much worse”? If you would, color me unsympathetic when that person suddenly expresses a desire for you to remove yourself from their presence.

For example killing during a war, or the death penalty,

Good luck finding any regular at Pharyngula who supports either of these.

or even dare I say abortion. All of these are forms of legally sanctioned/premeditated murder

Don’t even fucking go there. Preferably not ever but certainly not in this thread.

Not trying to start a flame war, but an genuinely interested with this angle to the argument..

I haven’t posted for a while, but I’d be keen for someone to extrapolate on the issue of murder.

And as people have expalined, which you will have read since you wouldn’t just jump into the middle of a conversation, people are not keen to do it.
How many versions of murder are there from the pov of the victim?

++++

I think the “metrics of abuse” is a common coping strategy among victims of abuse. I certainly do it myself. My childhood was emotionally abusive? Well, at least I wasn’t sexually abused… My mother hit me with a stick because I was afraid of being spanked? Well, at least she didn’t use a belt… My mother hit me regularly because I was intrinsically bad and needed it? Well, at least it wasn’t too frequent…
BUT, and here’s the big but, this is a coping strategy for the individual. Whatever gets you through this, go for it. It is NOT in any way, shape or form, anything fixed, objective, or logical. You don’t get to decide that for anybody else. Especially not with a side serving of “shut up, other people had it worse”.

The internet has made the whole having heroes and leaders thing so awkward! 15 years ago, it would have been so much easier to have Dawkins as a figurehead of atheism – 99.9% people would know him from his interview on TV, maybe a talk, and the books, he’d be that household name who said “who don’t you believe in thor?” and wrote that book about genes in the 70s. And the worst one had to fear was that he would write a controversial commentary in some newspaper, but that is slightly more unlikely than an embarassing tweet, and quickly forgotten and out of sight. Also, there would not have been a forum where e.g. PZ is forced to publicly dissect his precise relationship with leader person XY and justify in detail his support of this or that aspect of his personality in real-time. But of course, without the web, all the issues we care about would never have gotten the traction that they have in the first place. It’s just astonishing how it magnifies the idiosyncrasies of people which would have been easier to sweep under the rug in the olde tymes. The superficial Dawkins persona, the boffin who wrote the Selfish Gene and TGD, gave some inspiring atheist talks in the South around 2007, and was even interviewed on FOX news, would have been quite enough as a face of atheism – the whole damn tweeting package is just too much reality! Today, when we want to has a hero, we are stuck with the whole person, and that is usually a recipe for disaster. In the old days, idealizing was much easier.

@248 Anthony K
In response to the following from theoreticalgrrrl @247, who wrote:

So I do know what it’s like to finally have to completely write someone off.

Anthony K wrote:

I’m sorry you’ve had to do that. I have too. It gets easier.

Then I say something I very rarely say: In this instance, fuck you, fuck your fingers at the moment they wrote it, and whatevever everything-forsaken darkness it came from.

This entire thread has been the closest thing I’ve ever seen in the abstract world of online commununication to the “not with a bang, but a whimper” disaster my family ended up being in meat-space. Absolutely everything resonates.

But the thought that it should ever, outside the heat of some compilation of imaginary hells, be “easier” to write anyone off, is just beyond my understanding. Beyond my willingness to understand.

And that reticence to do so – especially when the conflict involved is so completely fucking plain – is seen as a flat and clear negative, is just a breath of some kind of horror to me. To me. As me. And maybe fuck me as well.

So fuck – and I mean fuck completely – your probably otherwise good self. Your not at all hard to imagine vastly better than me good self… but in this moment, in this one, isolated thing, I lay my heart and belly on saying not. Fucking not.

But the thought that it should ever, outside the heat of some compilation of imaginary hells, be “easier” to write anyone off, is just beyond my understanding. Beyond my willingness to understand.

Nonsense.
Maybe it’s not for you. Maybe it’s not with respect to a particular person or relationship.

But when you learn to stop letting yourself be abused, when you learn to protect yourself, it often can become QUITE easy to write someone off.

It doesn;t necessarily hurt them, you know. You don’t necessarily owe them any allegiance, you know…
It’s entirely possible that you can struggle less, go through less pain and guilt, and be free of the shit they help make of your life while they continue on merrily being their toxic selves without even taking any particular notice that one of their punching bags is gone.

They find new ones.

It’s not necessary for ridding your life of negative people to be a process of self-torture.

The penalty for rape in the UK is anything from a suspended sentence to life in jail without parole depending on the circumstances. Whether you agree with Dawkins or not every Western legal system does.

Same for murder while the UK has a mandatory life sentence (wrongly) depending on what happened you may find its only a few years served or life.

Smothering your partner who has been in coma for 10 years is murder in the UK exactly is the same crime as murdering a child of the street. It’s possibly you won’t even get jail time for the first murder but may well never be allowed out for the latter.

The penalty for rape in the UK is anything from a suspended sentence to life in jail without parole depending on the circumstances. Whether you agree with Dawkins or not every Western legal system does.

It’s such a shame that there isn’t a 300 post long thread preceding your post which addresses this point multiple times….oh wait…

I think he honestly believes he knows more than everyone else about it. I think that he’s been told how smart he is for so long that he just can’t comprehend the idea that there are things that other people understand better than he does.

Considering that my chair has no arms, I am not well-equipped to make a diagnosis, but I reckon this: Dawkins has not only been told how intelligent he is for years on end (and that’s just water on the mills of his already elite academic origin), but has also received heaps of adoration of a different sort – he’s been something like a personal savior for many a closeted atheist, the messiah who has shown to many a person for the first time in their lives how the wonderful gift of scientific thinking trumps the demons of superstition. Those very same people have lined up by the hundreds to tell him how he has changed their lifes – through the eyes of these fans, he is almost forced to perceive himself as the authority on rationality in the world. If he deems something silly (such as feminism), it’s after all the opinion of this savior of millions, an opinion not easily dismissed.

Climb down. This situation is not about your family and your trouble with your family. It’s not a reflection on you, and your private family experience is not the template on which every break in friendship is based.

You’re clearly in pain, and that’s a sorry situation. However, you’re way out of line.

For all the apologists: The degrees of murder comparison DOES NOT EXONERATE DAWKINS, you fucking twits. Because “date rape” and “rape by stranger” ARE NOT DIFFERENT DEGREES. They are arbitrary type distinctions, based on relationship to the culprit. The analog is not murder 1, 2, and 3: the analog would be “murder by stranger” and “murder by someone you know”. Which, like the two types of rape Dawkins bring up, are not deemed to be “worse” or “better”, are not legally distinct, and are only distinctions that are interesting for sociological reasons.

Perhaps some kind of open letter to Dawkins signed by prominent (and maybe not so prominent) members of the atheist community wouldn’t be a bad idea. I know it’s already being discussed at length online, so perhaps it’s unnecessary (he is clearly aware of the general response, but I’m not sure which posts, in particular, he has read), but it does have certain advantages over blog posts. Among the ‘noise’ of thousands of diverse internet posts, such things can contain a condensed, self-contained statement/argument, and the unambiguous support of the signatories. Of course, with an open letter, it’s the world who are being addressed just as much as the person it’s supposed to be ‘to’, and in this case it would be a statement to the world that such attitudes are not representative of this community as a whole. Thus reducing the likelihood of people saying ‘see, this is what atheism leads to’.

I’m truly sorry about what your family is going through. I meant to reassure, both that it gets easier to live without toxic persons in your life, and to identify and cut out toxic persons. But relationships aren’t always so cut ‘n’ dried, and sometimes good people become estranged for no good reason. I shouldn’t have generalized.

Are there kingdoms of emotion where logic is taboo, dare not show its face, zones where reason is too intimidated to speak?…

Some students are capable of temporarily accepting a noxious hypothetical, to explore where it might lead. Others are so blinded by emotion that they cannot even contemplate the hypothetical. They simply stop up their ears and refuse to join the discussion….

My friend sometimes poses this very question, and he tells me that about half the students are willing to entertain the hypothetical counterfactual and rationally discuss the consequences. The other half respond emotionally to the hypothetical, are too revolted to proceed and simply opt out of the conversation….

There are those whose love of reason allows them to enter such disagreeable hypothetical worlds and see where the discussion might lead. And there are those whose emotions prevent them from going anywhere near the conversation. Some of these will vilify and hurl vicious insults at anybody who is prepared to discuss such matters. Some will pursue active witch-hunts against moral philosophers for daring to consider obnoxious hypothetical thought experiments…..

I believe that, as non-religious rationalists, we should be prepared to discuss such questions using logic and reason. We shouldn’t compel people to enter into painful hypothetical discussions, but nor should we conduct witch-hunts against people who are prepared to do so. I fear that some of us may be erecting taboo zones, where emotion is king and where reason is not admitted; where reason, in some cases, is actively intimidated and dare not show its face. And I regret this. We get enough of that from the religious faithful. Wouldn’t it be a pity if we became seduced by a different sort of sacred, the sacred of the emotional taboo zone?…..

When a show-business personality is convicted of pedophilia, is it right that you actually need courage to say something like this: “Did he penetratively rape children or did he just touch them with his hands? The latter is bad but I think the former is worse”? How dare you rank different kinds of pedophilia? They are all equally bad, equally terrible. What are you, some kind of closet pedophile yourself?…..

But then I quoted Sam Harris to the effect that “Hamas publicly says they’d like to kill every Jew in the world” and I went on to raise Sam’s hypothetical question: What does that say about Hamas’s probable actions if positions were reversed and they had Israel’s military strength? Sam’s suggestion that this contrast might actually be demonstrating restraint on Israel’s part, unleashed a storm of furious accusations that he, and I, relished the bombing of Gaza’s children.

I also quoted Sam as saying “I don’t think Israel should exist as a Jewish state.” So of course I, and Sam, got vituperative brickbats from Israel and from American Jewish interests. I summed up my position on the fence (linking to an interview with Christopher Hitchens) as follows: “It is reasonable to deplore both the original founding of the Jewish State of Israel & aspirations now to destroy it.” But I swiftly learned that emotion can be so powerful that reasonable discussion – looking at both sides of the question dispassionately – becomes impossible…..

Some people angrily failed to understand that it was a point of logic using a hypothetical quotation about rape. They thought it was an active judgment about which kind of rape was worse than which. Other people got the point of logic but attacked me, equally furiously, for choosing the emotionally loaded example of rape to illustrate it. …..

I’ve listed cannibalism, trapped miners, transplant donors, aborted poets, circumcision, Israel and Palestine, all examples of no-go zones, taboo areas where reason may fear to tread because emotion is king. Broken noses are not in that taboo zone. Rape is. So is pedophilia. They should not be, in my opinion. Nor should anything else.

I didn’t know quite how deeply those two sensitive issues had infiltrated the taboo zone. I know now, with a vengeance. I really do care passionately about reason and logic. I think dispassionate logic and reason should not be banned from entering into discussion of cannibalism or trapped miners. And I was distressed to see that rape and pedophilia were also becoming taboo zones; no-go areas, off limits to reason and logic…..

They are afraid – and I promise you I am not exaggerating – of witch-hunts: hunts for latter day blasphemers by latter day Inquisitions and latter day incarnations of Orwell’s Thought Police.

Jesus fuck. Fuck you Richard Dawkins. Fuck you and your faux Vulcanism. You are no fucking Spock, Dawkins. You are no super rationalist. You just want an excuse to ignore other people’s concerns.

But I want to say one thing, about the discussion above about PZ’s question about how easy it would be to persuade Dawkins to change his mind or see that it’s at least possible that he’s wrong about this – I have a little bit of relevant information.

He did change his mind about something in the discussion with me that resulted in the joint statement. He did. For real.

He started out thinking it would be futile or even harmful for him to say anything about the organized harassment. As you know, the statement happened. He changed his mind.

I should of course have said RELATIVELY mild. Obviously I don’t think any pedophilia is mild in an absolute sense. But I presume most victims would agree that being touched by an adult hand (though very unpleasant, as I know from my own childhood experience) is RELATIVELY speaking not SO unpleasant as being violently penetrated by an adult penis. But the logical point is, or should be, uncontroversial: no endorsement of the less bad option is implied.

I spent years beating myself up with variations of this. It’s been long time now and I no longer believe my reactions were out of proportion to the abuse I suffered, but this stuff still hits me and reminds me of my wasted years. I can only imagine how I might have felt reading this 15-20 years ago. Thanks, Dawkins. Thanks a bunch.

When a show-business personality is convicted of pedophilia, is it right that you actually need courage to say something like this: “Did he penetratively rape children or did he just touch them with his hands? The latter is bad but I think the former is worse”?

No, it does NOT take courage. It takes an absolute lack of empathy and considerations or the victims to drag their ordeal through the mud and to think that you as somebody who had absolutely no part in this and who has absolutely NO expertise are qualified to objectively rate the occurences.
Dawkins seems to be absolutely incapable of asking the question “how would I feel if I were seriously suffering from abuse and now people are all over the place discussing this in graphic detail, telling me that it was not quite as bad as something else that could have happened”?
He is either absolutely incapable of understanding that he is inflicting real harm on people or he simply thinks that this is a price he’s willing to make them pay.

He did change his mind about something in the discussion with me that resulted in the joint statement. He did. For real.

I’m told chimpanzees refuse to learn from their social inferiors. I have long thought Dawkins suffers from the same problem. Be someone he takes seriously, and you can explain stuff to him; be a stranger on the dread Intarwebz, and he won’t waste his precious time listening to you.

Dawkins seems to be absolutely incapable of asking the question “how would I feel if I were seriously suffering from abuse and now people are all over the place discussing this in graphic detail, telling me that it was not quite as bad as something else that could have happened”?

Not sure if incapable; what’s clear is that the question hasn’t occurred to him. It didn’t immediately occur to me either when that kind of topic first came up on Pharyngula several years ago. You can really get used to a life in which you’ve never been traumatized!

But it didn’t take me years to reach your question. When was Elevatorgate again?!?

It’s also quote rich of Dawkins to invoke Kant’s kategorischen Imperativ when he’s actually doing the very thing Kant argues against: He uses the lived experiences and actual lives of people as means to make his “logical” point.

Regarding the general “despair” at having someone we admire turn out to be flawed, I would suggest that this is fundamentally a positive sign in the sense that it shows that our moral awareness continues to evolve and expand. Varieties of human suffering that were considered unremarkable in Dawkins’ formative years are now being acknowledged. It’s uncomfortable, but it makes sense and is preferable to the notion that there is any human being who could be emulated or followed without critique.

That really is beyond heinous – Dawkins is setting himself up as the unapologetic high priest of the toxic, straw-vulcanism subtype of skeptical thought. That he actually thinks it legitimate to chide rape surviviors for being overly ’emotional’ about rape is monstrous, but his downright testerical handwaving about supposed ‘witch hunts’ and a contemporary Inquistion going after anyone who defies the Mighty Orwellian Feminazi Collective(TM) that exists only in his own febrile deusions manages to take this objectionable tripe even further than usual.

Why doesn’t he just bestow the title of ‘brave hero’ on himself now, and get it over with?

There are plenty of actions that are admirable, and there are many people who are on balance admirable, but very few indeed are the people who are deserving of entirely unalloyed admiration at all times, and I would go further – that kind of admiration is actually corrosive to the recipient. It is the sort of thing that can lead people to actually start to believe in the myths of infallibility that can start to grow up around them. I think that this very thing has befallen Dawkins.

Ultimately, even the best among us mere mortals is flawed, and those of us who can credibly claim to be titans will pretty much always have feet of clay. The trick is to identify when a person’s flaws go beyond comparatively minor foibles and into the realm of becoming truly toxic and doing widespread harm to innocent people. I think Dawkins has crossed that line, but only you can make that judgement about him for yourself.

I do wish we could get it into the heads of this Praetorian Guard of Atheism™ that all these attempts to grade and to downgrade rape and all the victim blaming are bound up with notions of women’s uncleanness and Eve who tempted Adam and brought sin into the world. The manufactured assumption that acquaintance rape doesn’t count can be related to considerations of how much you might have to pay her father if it turns out to be really, really rape.

It is theocratic bollocks and it is time all these leading atheists stopped hiding behind it.

If it were not so painful to deal with, this would be the perfect example of why dictionary atheism is not enough. Leaping to that one there is “no is god” conclusion may feel very liberating but we are not really free, not until we have got rid of all that baggage, whether from our own lives as believers or from living in a society steeped in such thinking.

Exactly, exactly, exactly! Especially the theological, patriarchal notion of paying a father (or being terribly punished by having to marry the person you raped) for raping someone. There is a direct relation to how date/acquaintance rape is still viewed today. And if you take a clear, long look, the illustration is absolutely stark as to how rape victims are seen, and they are not seen as human beings.

It should be astonishing and appalling that anyone can still embrace such repulsive beliefs, however, when it comes to rape, it’s the exception, subject to this insistence that it really, really had to be the fault of the victim.

When a show-business personality is convicted of pedophilia, is it right that you actually need courage to say something like this: “Did he penetratively rape children or did he just touch them with his handsThe latter is bad but I think the former is worse”?

Ugh. No, no, no, no, no. No, it doesn’t take courage. It does take a head stuffed full of privilege and prejudice, along with a touch of idiocy to make such a distinction. Like rape and sexual assault, abuse is abuse. One person didn’t have it good because they were emotionally abused rather than used as a punching bag.

If a person is willing to put their hands on a child’s genitals, they’ll be willing to do something else. Really, why does anyone need to know more? Why this eagerness to dismiss ‘just touching them with his hands’?*

Dawkins once said that he considered teaching children about hell to be much worse abuse than [mild] molestation. I wonder, does he apply this whole degree of badness to religious teaching too?

*I suspect this insistence that handling genitals just ain’t all that bad is a lifetime of convincing himself that’s the truth in his case. Or not, what do I know?

Some people angrily failed to understand that it was a point of logic using a hypothetical quotation about rape. They thought it was an active judgment about which kind of rape was worse than which. Other people got the point of logic but attacked me, equally furiously, for choosing the emotionally loaded example of rape to illustrate it. …..

He really can’t see past his own nose. He really does see himself as this almighty dispassionate brain in a cloud, but takes the time to note, as always, how furiously others attack him. Insufferable.

I’d like for Dawkins to state, clearly, in two sentences or less, why he insists on choosing the emotionally loaded example of rape when it’s rather clear he doesn’t understand why it’s emotionally loaded.

*I suspect this insistence that handling genitals just ain’t all that bad is a lifetime of convincing himself that’s the truth in his case. Or not, what do I know?

I really don’t like speculating about people’s motives, but really, this more than smacks of “Don’t look at me, I’m fine, really, it wasn’t that bad, don’t talk about how mild pedophilia can badly traumatise somebody, really, other’s had it worse, look there!!!”

The end result is a raped person, or a dead person. There may be variations in the level of violence or suffering, but the baseline is always the same.

————————–

Hate to to say but that is so just completely wrong, the victim for the purpose of the law is actually irrelevant. If you murder or rape someone your crime is against the state not them

On a more practical basis, if you change radio stations in a car and while doing so you run into a minibus of children killing 10 of them its quite possible legally (and morally) that living with it might be the only punishment you would be given or deserve

Go into a school and shoot 10 children dead and the affects are the same 10 dead children very different case morally and legally

Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaidensays

Is it right that you actually need courage to say something like this: “Sure, your honor, I stuck it in. Yeah I was fucking and thrusting for several minutes. If you must know, I did orgasm. No, I never heard any verbal consent. Yes I heard something like, ‘No, stop!’

…But did you see that black fetish gear entered into evidence? That’s not a victim, that’s someone who’s begging to be forced”?

Fuck yes, you should need courage to say it. You should need a hell of a lot more courage than it takes in all the English speaking societies with which I’m familiar. You should be terrified of being on the front page of the biggest dailies in the country, under headlines screaming, “Unimaginable jerk repeats entirely reprehensible victim-blaming irrelevancies almost forgotten to history until self-serving court statement.”

And when someone famous is convicted of a sexual crime against a child or youth, you should absofuckinglutely need courage to go around asking which parts of that child/youth’s body were violated and to what extent and whether there was histologic injury and, please, can I see the rape exam photos?

You should need the kind of courage combined with self-abnegation it requires to sit down in a public square and light yourself on fire, though perhaps in a somewhat lesser dose. You should be terrified of how people might see you, using someone else’s personal victimization as a topic of public gossip to satisfy your oh-so-important intellectual curiosity.

Unfortunately such statements are distressingly common, so we can’t afford each the opprobrium it deserves. But courage? Yeah. Stock up.

Cause I’m fucking changing the world, and a whole lot of people see these statements as unacceptable to make **because they’ve actually thought about, and they actually care about** the consequences to others. Too many people heard these things too often without challenge to understand the assumptions that underlie, but the challenges are public now, and the internet never forgets. Now the information is out there for any to absorb, and over time it will become more and more clear that the expectation is that every adult has thought about how to talk about rape, when one chooses to do so. Then, for all our sakes, I hope that even if you haven’t learned adult empathy, you at least haven’t outgrown childish cowardice.

What is your fucking point? That data rape is more like texting while driving, while real rape is more like gunning down school children? Or that all social interactions should be handled like a legal case?
oh fuck off.

You may not like it, Janine, but the legal systems of whole countries see it that way, so who are you to say differently?

Jesus fucking steamrollering christ, really? THEY ARE WRONG if they see it that way. It’s as fucking simple as that, and you don’t need a fucking law degree or a degree in moral philosophy to see it and say it. GODS.

Thanks Richard Dawkins, for giving us shit like this to deal with. Much obliged.

You may not like it, Janine, but the legal systems of whole countries see it that way, so who are you to say differently?

I know you were being sarcastic here, Alex, but it’s also the truth. It’s the huge neon sign which blinks in societies everywhere, reminding rape victims that in a majority of cases, rape is seen as not that bad. The abysmal reporting rates and even worse conviction rates are a constant confirmation.

I know you were being sarcastic here, Alex, but it’s also the truth. It’s the huge neon sign which blinks in societies everywhere, reminding rape victims that in a majority of cases, rape is seen as not that bad. The abysmal reporting rates and even worse conviction rates are a constant confirmation.

Oh I know. (it wouldn’t even have been real sarcasm if it weren’t true somehow). But citing legal definitions, may it be in the UK, or in Afghanistan, or Vulcan, is basically the definition of not getting the point here, isn’t it. Is that what mrjonno would do, going up to someone who just lost a loved one and say – “you see, your spouse may just have been run over by a drunk driver, but then, it’s not like xe was killed on purpose, amirite?! Whole different ballgame!”
I guess it would be considered appropriate on Vulcan.

Some will pursue active witch-hunts against moral philosophers for daring to consider obnoxious hypothetical thought experiments.
…
[lots of paragraphs]
…
They are afraid – and I promise you I am not exaggerating – of witch-hunts: hunts for latter day blasphemers by latter day Inquisitions and latter day incarnations of Orwell’s Thought Police.

OMFFSM.

When one (1) moral philosopher loses tenure for posing a hypothetical about rape or pedophilia…

When one (1) moral philosopher is divorced by a spouse solely because of the stomach-turning reaction caused by learning the discussions that philosopher leads in class…

When one (1) moral philosopher is forced to get an unlisted number to stop the harassing calls that started solely based upon negative public reaction to that philosopher’s sexual-violence-related hypotheticals…

THEN Dawkins can feel free to say,

They are afraid – although this should be understood to be metaphorical and exaggerated, but colorfully descriptive – of witch-hunts: hunts for latter day blasphemers by latter day Inquisitions and latter day incarnations of Orwell’s Thought Police.

without being roundly criticized for idiocy, arrogance, and detachment.

If he wants to actually assert

They are afraid – and I promise you I am not exaggerating – of witch-hunts: hunts for latter day blasphemers by latter day Inquisitions and latter day incarnations of Orwell’s Thought Police.

he can wait until – and I promise you I am not exaggerating – in the process of testing all the members of the local university’s philosophy department 3 moral philosophers are drowned in a mill pond and pronounced innocent of immoral hypotheticals immediately before the 7 that kept head above water are burned to death for their hellish and heretical hypotheticals.

“I am not exaggerating”? Pfft. The worst part is that he really thinks he is so important that sustained internet criticism of his actual words is equivalent, with no exaggeration, to systematic, institutional, multiple murder.

I’m Spock enough sometimes feel that criticisms leveled at him that were correct in substance were wrong in emphasis or proportion or tone. I held my tongue because I’m Spock enough to empathize with other human beings and realize that emphasis and proportion and tone aren’t things that can be “wrong” without knowing the speaker’s goals so that they can be assessed for serving, or not, those goals. I don’t get to assume those goals, so I’m not in a position to begin to gather evidence for whether those things are “wrong”.

But I read his statement above, and yes, there’s a lot to criticize so maybe it was inevitable, and I found it surprising and distressing that people hadn’t taken this head on.

This is the single clearest indication that I’ve had that there is simply no point in even attempting to engage him on issues of justice. When your values are so screwed up that sustained criticism of your actual words is equated – not merely compared, but contained within a statement to go out of its way to make absolutely sure the reader forbids any possibility exaggeration was intended – with on the one hand decades long campaigns of torture and murder in the real world, and on the other the most fascist, nightmarish dystopian fiction any English writer has conjured in fiction.

I am not some overwhelmingly omnipresent, omnipotent Big Brother who will accept nothing less than control of your innermost thoughts. I am not conspiring to kill wise-women, midwives, and undesirables. I am not torturing the bodies of people who insufficiently adhere to my doctrines for the divine pleasure of their submissive screams switched affinity, nor do I brutally kill those that relapse…or simply possess lands I desire.

I am merely a human being who has no trouble parsing words and logic who declares, without exaggeration, that it is impossible to write that I and people like me have created a realistic, unexaggerated fear of thought control, torture, and murder, without revealing a moral deficit so profound it challenges the depth of the public relations hole Dawkins has dug over the last few years.

My friend sometimes poses this very question, and he tells me that about half the students are willing to entertain the hypothetical counterfactual and rationally discuss the consequences. The other half respond emotionally to the hypothetical, are too revolted to proceed and simply opt out of the conversation….

Out of the entire train wreck, this jumped out at me.

Isn’t “about half” the percentage of college-aged people who have a significant chance of being raped in their lifetimes?

Hate to to say but that is so just completely wrong, the victim for the purpose of the law is actually irrelevant. If you murder or rape someone your crime is against the state not them

On a more practical basis, if you change radio stations in a car and while doing so you run into a minibus of children killing 10 of them its quite possible legally (and morally) that living with it might be the only punishment you would be given or deserve

So what are you doing to FIX the law, having described in such detail how BROKEN it is?

Or are you the kind of servile scum who’s literally incapable of comprehending that LAWS NEED TO CONFORM TO JUSTICE NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND?

Some people angrily failed to understand that it was a point of logic using a hypothetical quotation about rape. They thought it was an active judgment about which kind of rape was worse than which. Other people got the point of logic but attacked me, equally furiously, for choosing the emotionally loaded example of rape to illustrate it. …..

I’ve listed cannibalism, trapped miners, transplant donors, aborted poets, circumcision, Israel and Palestine, all examples of no-go zones, taboo areas where reason may fear to tread because emotion is king. Broken noses are not in that taboo zone. Rape is. So is pedophilia. They should not be, in my opinion. Nor should anything else.

Jesus Christ. So he wasn’t saying anything about abuse or rape, it just happened to be an example that popped into his head, and now he’s all sad because you can’t use ’emotionally loaded’ examples to make a logical point.

Does he really believe this shit? It seems pretty evident that he’s still stinging from being criticised the last time he spouted off on this subject, and couldn’t resist going to that well again.

What is a typical conversation with Dawkins like, if he refuses to show any restraint in the examples he uses?
‘This wine is good. As good as some murderers must feel when they brutally kill and dismember someone! What? I’m just using an example of how something can be good. Why are you looking at me like that? Oh, brutal killings are so emotionally loaded!’

Dawkins: “They thought it was an active judgment about which kind of rape was worse than which. Other people got the point of logic but attacked me, equally furiously, for choosing the emotionally loaded example of rape to illustrate it. …..”

No you fucking idiot, that’s a flat out lie. You said stranger rape at knifepoint is worse than date rape, and anyone who disagrees needs to learn to think. .

“Date rape is bad. Stranger rape at knifepoint is worse. If you think that’s an endorsement of date rape, go away and learn how to think.”

and he clarifies with this turd:
“‘Mild date rape is bad. Violent date rape is worse.’ Is it really so hard to understand that that doesn’t constitute endorsement of either?”

Rape is a violent crime all by itself, there is no “mild” rape. .

People who disagree are using logic, you are bringing up loaded terms like “witch hunts” and all the other crap people like you throw out to silence dissent against your “superior logic.”

don’t quite get it yet, do you mean that the half which reacted emotionally may consist of those who already have been victim of sexual assault?

—

Some will pursue active witch-hunts against moral philosophers for daring to consider obnoxious hypothetical thought experiments.

So Dawkins wants to play moral philosopher and go through all kinds of hypotheticals concerning types of rape or whatnot, or to godwin up the game, differently sized holocausts and what they imply, because whatever. Let’s grant that this might be useful for some reason – wasn’t the main concern that it’s taking half-baked parts of such a discussion to the most public forum one can think of, like twitter, that is very problematic?

don’t quite get it yet, do you mean that the half which reacted emotionally may consist of those who already have been victim of sexual assault?

My point was that “about half” could describe the set containing A) cis women and B) trans and non-binary people, both of whom have a very high chance of being the victims of sexual violence, and are mostly very much aware of it, making it not-at-all-a-“hypothetical.”

According to The Sun Chronicle, Mansfield police determined that 18-year-old Sean Murphy began kissing the 17-year-old girl after meeting her at the concert on Sunday, and then took her away from her friends to another part of the outdoor amphitheater. She said that she went with him because “she was afraid of what would happen” if she didn’t agree.

After removing the girl’s shorts and underwear, Murphy reportedly began having sex with her.

Police said that 15 or more concert-goers gathered around to watch, and even recorded the incident on their cell phones. Some of those photographs and videos had been recovered as evidence.

“My friend told me to look over there and there was a couple on the ground having intercourse. So we looked at it, and we took pictures and we thought it was consensual,” one witness told WFXT.

The attack only allegedly came to an end when a woman asked the victim if the act was consensual.

“Do you want this?” the woman was heard saying.

According to a police report, the girl said, “no,” and then a witness “saw the female break free and run.”

The girl’s friends later brought her to police, and gates to the venue were closed until the suspect was found.

The police report said that Murphy admitted that he had been intoxicated from drinking Jack Daniels, but “stressed that he did not force himself on her.” The report also said that he was overheard telling his parents on the phone that he “messed up.”

Murphy pleaded not guilty to charges of forcible rape at a court hearing on Monday.

In a statement on Tuesday, defense attorney Neil P. Crowley, who is representing Murphy, insisted that his client did not rape the girl.

“This was a consensual act, not a sexual assault. There are no allegations of force or violence put against him,” Crowley said. “This was a private act that regrettably occurred in a public place. Mr. Murphy deeply regrets this incident and I’m sure the young woman does as well.”

Shit like this is why it’s harmful to talk about ranking different types of rape. The DA is treating this rape as if its not that bad because there wasn’t any force or violence (in his eyes anyway; I can see the force quite easily).

Y’know, I really don’t think it would. I expect if one was going to take a Vulcan view of rape, logically, one would have to take into account what rape is, and what rape does – it strips a person of their autonomy and turns them into an object. Logically, that’s all kinds of fuckin’ wrong, and any Vulcan worth their green blood would know it. Logically, the effect of rape cannot be dismissed, not just on the person who was raped, but on those close to the person who was raped, and on society at large, therefor the emotions engendered by rape can’t be dismissed either. A specific portion of humans are more at risk of rape than others. They are regarded as prey, and they know this. Logically, you would have to look at this and conclude that the effects of rape are far reaching, highly detrimental to human progress in all regards, and decide that it was a critical problem in need of fixing.

If Dawkins was capable of actually thinking like a Vulcan, he wouldn’t be such a bloody asshole.

You make a logical point. It would be considered inappropriate on Vulcan. Unlike on that other planet, Strawvulcan, where the Science Directorate has decreed that context, like time travel, does not exist.

—
btw. have you changed your nym in the past year or so, your avatar and style look ferry familiar but I haven’t been reading much for different reasons.

<- incidentally, I find that this willingness to take the wider context and societal significance of things into account is precisely what differentiates progressive politics from conservative right wing politics. Ask Dawkins what he thinks of things like affirmative action. He might tell you that it's unjust, because people are not treated equally on paper (ignoring that this merely aims to compensate past injustice). It would fit the picture.

I’m fairly sure you’re not suggesting this. I hope no one asks him, because I’m scared of his answer. He refuses to see the impact of his words on subjects like rape and pedophilia. I’d hate to see what he’d say about such a topic like affirmative action.

Of course I’m not suggesting this. I’m just asking questions, as an intellectual like me should be permitted! You know – what would he say if one asked him. I do not actually encourage anyone to do anything of the sort!

Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaidensays

The full paragraph from which is derived the part of Dawkins’ writing that most affected you.

“We all agree it isn’t true that some human races are genetically superior to others in intelligence. But let’s for a moment suspend disbelief and consider the consequences if it were true. Would it ever be right to discriminate in job hiring? Etcetera.” My friend sometimes poses this very question, and he tells me that about half the students are willing to entertain the hypothetical counterfactual and rationally discuss the consequences. The other half respond emotionally to the hypothetical, are too revolted to proceed and simply opt out of the conversation.

What strikes me is the first part. I guess I haven’t read or discussed his fucked up HBD shit much. I’m pretty ignorant of what Dawkins has been saying on that front. Well, I don’t know a whole lot about what Dawkins says lately on any front, since, though I’ve read full books of his writing in the past, today I only pay any attention to him when I notice a critique of him somewhere. So this race hypothetical counterfactual really hit me hard.

The point of such things is to get at how we make moral decisions. The criteria we use. Fuck, I fully intend to get into that realm with gender workshop stuff eventually. Is the abolition of gender more or less moral than the abolition of compulsory gender? What would it even mean to have non-compulsory gender?

But that presumes the topic isn’t discussed outside the classroom/ workshop/ whatever. I and my friends have heard too fucking many people assert that there **are** in fact racial (and sex!) differences in intelligence. We hear people use that to justify discrimination all the fucking time. We have Harvard presidents justifying the current gender disparity in faculty starting with exactly this kind of assumption and then proceeding to publicly lay out reasoning why this makes the disparity acceptable (though I’m sure privately the fucking arrogant, “We’re Harvard, so we only take the best, so whatever our faculty looks like must be what ‘the best’ looks like,” played a role).

Suppose after much research, it is determined that racial disparities in intelligence are a myth, but that white people are best motivated to work hard and creatively by thoughts of harming others, while other races are not. Further research confirms that this genetic tendency accounts for why white people were so aggressive in the development of military technologies and in global colonization and conquest. Would it ever be appropriate to discriminate against white people in hiring? What about in cases of political office or high governmental appointments?

Now you’re not only exploring previously unexplored terrain, you’re doing it in a way that flips the meaning of the ethnic Europeans’ global conquest, from proud men on top of the world to evil thugs that couldn’t be held back from executing their evil urges.

You can even, later, bring up the justifications for job discrimination that already exist in the racial-intelligence case, citing sources, and talk about whether the argument here played out similarly to or different from those arguments.

Further, you can talk about the effect of **just having the argument**. Those white guys that felt suddenly defensive when they were all rational about abortion? Yeah, them. Why are they objecting to mere hypotheticals? What can we say now about those who have to encounter a constant, droning barrage of

Can I rape you now?

from boringly normal men who ask the question, take a small step across the intellectual landscape, and ask it again…over and over and over?

What about, and ZOMG do ethics professors hate this, talking about the ethics of such discussions and whether the professor has an ethical duty to think carefully about what exactly is being communicated, what exactly is being challenged, and then construct a hypothetical that not only reaches the pedagogical goal, but does so via methods that minimize expected harms?

Is there an ethical dimension to lecturing? Or merely pedagogical?

Does Dawkins even fucking understand the point of ethical hypotheticals? Does a professor who acts like justifying racist hiring is so totally just a hypothetical thing that would never happen if academic freedom didn’t permit this one little corner of human endeavor where, if pushed hard enough by a professor, one might encounter arguments for the utility of discrimination?

I sure hope that Dawkins failed to understand that professor, and failed as spectacularly as he failed to understand the criticism of his statements yesterday. Otherwise there’s a classroom where *I’d* sure as hell react emotionally.

So, a recap: organised atheism has, as one of its myriad goals, as stated by its thought leader, the spanking of rape victims and their supporters for getting emotional during Headmaster’s logic class.

So, a recap: organised atheism has, as one of its myriad goals, as stated by its thought leader, the spanking of rape victims and their supporters for getting emotional during Headmaster’s logic class.

The Church of Satan, in contrast, is working to expand access to abortion services for women in the US.

Boy, did I bet on the wrong horse.

From their official website listing their 11 rules:

Do not give opinions or advice unless you are asked.
Do not tell your troubles to others unless you are sure they want to hear them
Do not make sexual advances unless you are given the mating signal.
Do not harm little children.

and here’s their listing of sins.
Looks like they’re beating us by a long shot.

The Church of Satan, in contrast, is working to expand access to abortion services for women in the US.

Back in my younger days, I had a lot of friends who were Satanists, used to hang out at the Church of Satan quite a bit. Nice people, socially progressive and very keen on equality. What’s not to like?

Richard Dawkins was simply stating that by pointing out differing levels of “badness” in two things, does not imply an endorsement of the less bad thing in any way.

The use of rape as an example of this logical reasoning might have seemed like a poor choice, as it is a highly sensitive subject. However, in choosing an example that people have very strong feelings about, he has truly made his point!

A huge number of people began to attack Dawkins for seemingly endorsing “date rape” or at least minimizing how bad it is. However, at no point does Dawkins do this, he simply picked a different rape scenario that many would consider worse and said that is was worse.

Saying X is worse than Y says nothing about how bad Y is compared to anything by X.

This is basic logic stuff, and I’m sure PZ and nearly all of you in this comment section understand it.
However, it seems that PZ and many of my fellow commenters ignore this logical reality if it concerns something sensitive, and especially if the logic can be ignored to attack and defame another person (in this case Richard).

Richard Dawkins was simply stating that by pointing out differing levels of “badness” in two things, does not imply an endorsement of the less bad thing in any way.

That simple statement is not so simple. Who was saying otherwise? What is anyone supposed to do with this purely simple and totally unremarkable thing?

The use of rape as an example of this logical reasoning might have seemed like a poor choice, as it is a highly sensitive subject. However, in choosing an example that people have very strong feelings about, he has truly made his point!

His point is that our experiences don’t matter? He can stuff his fucking “pure logic.” What kind of fucking science has he been doing all of these years, the non-empirical kind?

Richard Dawkins was simply stating that by pointing out differing levels of “badness” in two things, does not imply an endorsement of the less bad thing in any way.

Oh FFS, could all of you who are incapable of thinking a sentence through stick to one thread, please?

Not endorsing something is NOT the same as not rating something. Dawkins insists on rating rape while claiming to not endorse it. He is incapable of thinking clearly about this subject, and those who agree with him are no better.

Here’s a thought, Jeff – read all the comments in a thread before you speak up, you can save yourself embarrassment that way.

In quoting E.M. Forster, I was asserting the primacy, in my value system, of the personal over the political; or, if you will, that the personal IS political. That was drummed into me by feminists in the 1960s, and the minute I heard it, the phrase resonated with me.

I certainly do not endorse Dawkins. Period. I don’t like his politics, I don’t like the social implications he draws from his biology, I abhor (and frankly was never surprised by) his attitude to women and sexual abuse. Nevertheless, PZ is a longstanding colleague who, in my view, has not shied away from criticizing someone he still calls a friend. I do hope they talk. It might end the friendship, it might even be helpful.

While I’m about it, I was an exact contemporary of Hitchens at Oxford. He was a nasty piece of work then, and his later career was entirely predictable.

If both groups have a given problem, and the latter has it written into their official doctrine (and has official doctrine, rather than de facto), I don’t think it’s reasonable to say they’re “beating [the other] by a long shot.”

Richard Dawkins was simply stating that by pointing out differing levels of “badness” in two things, does not imply an endorsement of the less bad thing in any way.

Oh, for the sake of all that is fuck! Do you see that number 378 in the upper left corner of your comment? That means 377 people commented before you. Three. Hundred. And. Seventy. Seven. Do you really think this needed to be said this far into the thread?

However, at no point does Dawkins do this, he simply picked a different rape scenario that many would consider worse and said that is was worse.

Which is a value judgement he has no earthly business making until it’s happening to him and even then only in the context of coping with his own trauma.

This is basic logic stuff, and I’m sure PZ and nearly all of you in this comment section understand it.
However, it seems that PZ and many of my fellow commenters ignore this logical reality if it concerns something sensitive, and especially if the logic can be ignored to attack and defame another person (in this case Richard).

Nobody is ignoring logic, you jackass. What we, unlike Richard Fucking Dawkins and his Ivory Tower Acolytes, are doing is not ignoring the fact that people feel and that they have every right to feel and they have every right to be angry when Richard Fucking Dawkins decides to rhetorically wank all over their lived experiences.

It’s as if people saw the word “Rape” and their brains turned off…

Again, we’re just actually using all of our brains, including the icky emotive parts, because we’re not laboring under the delusion that deliberately goading people about a sensitive topic and then coming over all straw Vulcan and tut-tutting at them for reacting exactly the way we knew they would is a behavior to admire.

Knowknot:
Climb down. This situation is not about your family and your trouble with your family. It’s not a reflection on you, and your private family experience is not the template on which every break in friendship is based.
You’re clearly in pain, and that’s a sorry situation. However, you’re way out of line.

– Cool that you used “climb down” rather than “calm down,” since the latter was previously and specifically called out as condescending.
– And exactly how would you know that I’m “in pain,” as opposed to anything else that might be based on an actual thought? Another condescension, but good textbook try.
– And I do not in any way think any of this is a reflection on me. Fuck me as a mote especially regarding this issue. But I do think there are bits of what’s going on here that reflect any kind of breakage – especially breakage with meaningful cause, when any kind of bond is involved.
– But I will accept “out of line.” And I apologize for that.

@316 Anthony K

@Knownot, 302
I’m truly sorry about what your family is going through. I meant to reassure, both that it gets easier to live without toxic persons in your life, and to identify and cut out toxic persons. But relationships aren’t always so cut ‘n’ dried, and sometimes good people become estranged for no good reason. I shouldn’t have generalized.
Again, I’m sorry for what you’re going through.

– Bless you for that. Seriously. Your response is congruent with the person I thought I saw in your writing; someone who actually gives a damn and knows the difference between an attack on an idea and an attack on a person. (Attempted clarity: in this I refer to this specific interchange alone, and am not attempting to imply anything regarding Dawkins or any of his abominable denseness in matters of greater concern).
– And more appropriate to the real issues, I agree with you completely onthe necessity and actual good in cutting abusive ties, over which those involving rape loom.
– But I do apologize for the tone for being out of line – while admitting my actual meaning remains intact, whether it was understood or not.
– But I think it’s clear you get all that.
– So I’ll shut up, after apologizing again for the unintended tangent, which is more damning due to the gravity of the greater issue… and, inasmuch as what I think matters, adding that you do youself credit.

Also, Jeff, where do you think Dawkins has the right to declare which rape is worse than another? Or you, for that matter, or anyone else?

Here’s an exercise for you:

I was raped weekly for six years as a child, ages 3 to 9.

When I was 16, I was raped, beaten, strangled and knifed by a stranger.

When I was 19, I woke up with the fingers of someone I barely knew in my vagina.

Which of those experiences was the worst one, for me?

It would be highly inappropriate for me or anyone else to try to tell you which of these experiences was worse for you.

I can plainly see how THAT would be offensive.

However, making a blanket statement about non-specific hypothetical crime scenarios and IF one might be considered worse that this would not diminish the “badness” of the other does NOT seem like it should be offensive.

I don’t mean to offend anyone here, I was honestly taken back by the response to Richard’s post. Rape is a despicable crime, and no kind of rape is exempt from this. My heart aches for any of you reading this that have suffered sexual abuse.

There are plenty of people out there who ARE making comments that understate the severity of the crime of rape, I simply don’t believe that Richard Dawkins’ intention was to do that. Rather, I believe the point he was making is that people ought NOT to take offence if he were to make a comparison between two terrible things, saying that one is worse does not make the other one less terrible and no one should misinterpret that.

Like you, I obviously find ALL rape to be despicable and horrendous acts, where we differ is that I believe there are crimes involving rape which are EVEN WORSE. (Where life-threatening injuries are sustained, for example)

Rather, I believe the point he was making is that people ought NOT to take offence if he were to make a comparison between two terrible things, saying that one is worse does not make the other one less terrible and no one should misinterpret that.

Are you even for real right now? Did you seriously just claim that saying X is worse than Y is not the same as saying Y is less bad than X? Did I really just read that? Really? What color is the sky on your planet?

Are you even for real right now? Did you seriously just claim that saying X is worse than Y is not the same as saying Y is less bad than X? Did I really just read that? Really? What color is the sky on your planet?

So what you’re trying to say is that there’s a minimum badness threshold, and saying “Y is worse than X” can’t send X below that threshold. However, you’re defending a guy who has been tacking the adjective “mild” onto things like pedophilia and rape. That is not how someone talks who acknowledges an unbreachable lower threshold. That is the language of minimization.

However, making a blanket statement about non-specific hypothetical crime scenarios and IF one might be considered worse that this would not diminish the “badness” of the other does NOT seem like it should be offensive.

It’s not only offensive, it is wrong. Why do you think it’s okay to apply Dawkin’s rating rhetoric in a hypothetical, when you know it’s obviously wrong to do that in an individual situation? Do you have any idea of how many rape victims there are? How do you know if someone has been raped or not? Here’s the thing – you don’t know, unless someone tells you. Every fucking time Dawkins opens his mouth to pontificate on rape, and what’s really bad, and what’s not so bad (he uses the term mild), he is literally informing thousands of rape victims that their experience wasn’t really all that bad. And you don’t see how wrong that is?

Every fucking time Dawkins opens his mouth to pontificate on rape, and what’s really bad, and what’s not so bad (he uses the term mild), he is literally informing thousands of rape victims that their experience wasn’t really all that bad.

According to the CDC, nearly 1 in 5 women have been raped in their lives and 1 in 71 men. And that’s not counting any non-binary people that may not be included in the CDC’s survey. Richard Dawkins has nearly 1 million followers on Twitter; we’re talking 6-digit numbers of his followers being rape victims, assuming those proportions more or less hold true. And that’s just the people actually following him on Twitter. This shit is not harmless.

Further to my # 396 that’s also obviously not counting people who don’t connect the dots between what happened to them and rape (and thus answer in the negative when asked if they’ve been raped) precisely because of this inane, religious zeal to class rape by someone you know as not really rape (along with other awful ways we shame, demean and dismiss rape victims).

Unless you’re Richard Dawkins, or you’re a mind reader, how do you know what his INTENT was?

Furthering your point, Tony, what in the fuck difference does it make what his intent happens to be? Intent is not bloody magic, it doesn’t make what Dawkins is doing okay, or harmless.

Also, personally, I don’t think there’s good intent involved, given his prior insistence that all child molestation isn’t necessarily bad, his prior statement that teaching children about hell was worse abuse than molestation, his prior missive Dear Muslima, and so on.

Also, personally, I don’t think there’s good intent involved, given his prior insistence that all child molestation isn’t necessarily bad, his prior statement that teaching children about hell was worse abuse than molestation, his prior missive Dear Muslima, and so on.

Good point. He’s really keen on ranking different types of trauma. Given Dear Muslima, I think it’s his way of being able to dismiss certain kinds of oppression as not that bad/not worth “whining” about. If he were a random atheist saying this shit that would still be awful, but it’s made worse that he’s a leading figure in the movement and has millions of followers, many of whom treat him like he’s the atheist pope. His words give weight to the extremist assholes in the atheist movement, like the MRAs and anti-feminists. So of course they support him.